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IA PCs: should you equip yourself right away?
September 2024 by Laurent Sirgy, Regional Director for France, Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Kingston Technology
2024 has been widely heralded as the year when AI-enabled PCs will take off. But when will it be? Industry experts seem to agree that around 50 million of these PCs should be on the market in 2024. According to Gartner, by 2025, 43% of PCs shipped will incorporate AI, and up to 60% by the end of 2027, according to the International Data Corporation.
This suggests that AI PCs will soon be the standard. But what are they really used for? At the moment, many of the applications optimised for these PCs concern videoconferencing, project management and creative tools.
It might seem that the use of this technology is still limited, but these applications represent the infancy of AI integration. The potential for growth remains immense. They target sectors where the need is high and where AI offers undeniable benefits. Although this may seem restrictive, it is a logical starting point. Rather than worrying about this seemingly limited scope, it should be seen as an evolutionary stage. As AI technology evolves and is democratised, its applications will multiply considerably, and the sectors concerned today will be fields of experimentation. What’s more, these applications are helping to optimise the hardware and software ecosystems, laying the foundations for the wider incorporation of AI.
When should you upgrade?
AI PCs will transform the way we work. CIOs may be inclined to adopt them quickly to take advantage of increased productivity, enhanced security, improved privacy and lower latency. However, some companies may defer investment, as new technologies tend to be expensive at the outset and applications are still few and far between.
In a developing sector, it may make sense to update existing devices with the latest DDR5 memory and NVMe SSDs to take full advantage of emerging AI applications. This will largely be determined by the available budget, requirements and technology upgrade cycle of each company. If CIOs choose to purchase new AI PCs, they should avoid models where components are soldered to the motherboard rather than nested, as this could limit storage, memory and functionality.
CIOs should carefully weigh the cost of renewal against their company’s current and future requirements. As AI applications collect data on users and their use of terminals, storage and memory requirements will grow. Underestimating these requirements when integrating AI PCs could prove costly in the long term. So it’s essential to plan with the future in mind.
