Windows 10's farewell tour – not AI PCs – set to drive laptop sales in 2025

Impact of AI-integrated notebooks on overall market remains limited for now, says TrendForce

The global laptop market is forecast to grow by 4.9 percent during 2025, but commercial upgrade cycles and the looming Windows 10 end of life are driving this rather than demand for AI-capable PCs.

Taiwan-based market watcher TrendForce says it expects laptop shipment figures to show a moderate recovery for the end of 2024, then pick up next year – and it isn't due to AI PCs as "the impact of AI-integrated notebooks on the overall market remains limited for now."

Looking over the market, the firm says that commercial laptops faced "headwinds" during 2024 because of factors such as economic and political instability, which led to more cautious demand. Despite this, it still expects annual shipments to total 174 million units, marking a 3.9 percent year-on-year increase.

Going forward, it believes that political uncertainty following the US presidential election is now subsiding, and that rate cuts by the Federal Reserve back in September are likely to "stimulate capital flow."

This will open up the floodgates of deferred replacement demand from corporates, TrendForce forecasts, leading to a stronger recovery for the commercial market in 2025. Combined with the end-of-service date for Windows 10 in October next year, this is set to see shipments grow by 4.9 percent to 183 million units.

Other factors behind the sluggish recent demand are pricing and confusion over the newly introduced AI PC category.

"Businesses want to move to AI PCs but not pay a premium as there are no compelling business cases," Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal recently told The Register.

Currently, AI-capable PCs carry a 10-15 percent price premium over standard PCs, something that will likely need to change in order to loosen the corporate purse strings.

The confusion is caused by differing AI PC definitions, with vendors such as Intel simply regarding it as a system with one of its latest processors that includes an embedded neural processing unit (NPU) for accelerating some AI tasks, while Microsoft's CoPilot+ PC branding is for Windows systems with an NPU that performs at 40 TOPS or greater.

Businesses are hesitant as they are uncertain over which definition will offer the greater future-proofing should AI algorithms become a key part of everyday workloads in the near future.

However, the IT channel is stocking up with AI-capable PCs in anticipation of a wave of fresh sales, with recent reports indicating these made up 20 percent of all shipments to distributors during Q3 2024.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is stepping up its own campaign to encourage Windows 10 users to move to Windows 11 by pushing full-screen ads in front of them, which will often mean investing in new PC hardware.

TrendForce also warns of the elephant in the room: that the global laptop market remains closely tied to US trade policies, and it is probable that it will feel the impact of any heightened import tariffs that may be brought in by the Trump administration.

China remains the dominant manufacturing hub for laptop production, making up about 89 percent of total capacity. While some of the companies involved are expanding production into other countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Mexico, TrendForce notes that establishing a fully integrated supply chain ecosystem in these regions to avoid the worst tariffs will take time.

Consequently, the market intelligence firm concludes that its 2025 shipment forecasts "may be subject to adjustments based on evolving market conditions." A cheery thought to usher in the new year. ®