Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs are expected to sell well if a number of new predictions from an analyst firm prove accurate. What’s more, the laptops could pose a threat to Apple’s MacBooks in the future.
Of course, these numbers are just an estimate, involving both a crystal ball and an educated guess, and the fact that the AI PC sales boom is already underway. In case you missed it, in Q2 2024, AI PCs (defined as any computer with an NPU (Neural Processing Unit to accelerate AI workloads) – not a Copilot+ PC, which needs a more powerful NPU, we should clarify – reached $8.8 million in sales according to Canalys, another analyst firm, doubling from Q1.
If Wccftech According to Omdia’s new forecast, sales of Microsoft’s ARM-based Copilot+ PC will reach 800,000 units this year, and that will increase by more than 500% to 5.2 million units in 2025. That will accelerate further to a total of 47.7 million units of these laptops in 2028, we’re told.
If we take into account all AI PCs, meaning ARM-based devices and Intel or AMD AI laptops, we’re looking at a rather staggering 34.2 million units shipped in 2025, which with the ARM-based machines on top of that gives a total of 39.4 million units. By 2028, that total of ARM and Intel/AMD AI PCs will be 155.4 million units – if this educated guess comes to pass, of course.
Analysis: Smack-Book Conversation
In short, Copilot+ PCs are expected to become very popular – to an eye-opening extent – in the future. Of course, most AI laptops of the Windows 11 variety after this year will be Copilot+ PCs (as most chips with NPUs from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm qualify for that designation, with a suitably powerful NPU).
Omdia gives us a couple of reasons why we might see such an explosion in popularity, namely that AI will help people be creative, as AI can take on image or video creation tasks, giving everyone the opportunity to be a content creator. Whether or not that’s a good thing in terms of a flood of AI-generated content and all the various concerns that come with it remains to be seen – but it should undeniably be a major selling point for Copilot+ PCs, we agree.
AI PCs are also expected to have a major impact on education. They will not only help students, but also teachers prepare teaching materials for their students (of course, all types of teaching materials can be created in no time).
Omdia further points out that if Microsoft equips ARM-based Copilot+ PCs with a powerful discrete GPU, these devices could pose a major problem for Apple’s MacBooks.
The analyst firm notes: “If Microsoft introduces an AI gaming or AI creator laptop with a 45-80 watt thermal design power (ARM) chip with a discrete graphics card (Discrete GPU), and compresses the thickness of the laptop to almost the institutional thickness of Apple’s MacBook Pro (within 16mm) through the thin and light feature of OLED displays, it will cause a crisis in the sales of Apple’s MacBook Pro.”
AI on the rise
That Microsoft would go this route would come as no surprise. In fact, it was a stated goal when Microsoft first launched Copilot+ PCs, back when the company told us: “We will be bringing new Copilot+ PC experiences to you at a later date. In the future, we expect to see devices featuring this silicon (i.e. Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM-based chips, plus Intel and AMD CPUs) paired with powerful graphics cards like Nvidia GeForce RTX and AMD Radeon, bringing Copilot+ PC experiences to an even broader audience, like power gamers and creators.”
Well, fair enough – Microsoft is undoubtedly planning more powerful ARM-based Copilot+ PCs (and x86 models, meaning Intel and AMD silicon) in the future, and those will certainly pose a challenge to the MacBook Pro. Apple isn’t standing still with the MacBook Pro either, though, and in a few years we’ll see even thinner (OLED-toting) models of the Pro – perhaps with their own equally high-performance graphics solutions (we certainly wouldn’t bet against it).
This isn’t all about the hardware, though, and a lot depends on how well Microsoft does with pushing the software side of the equation, and how seamlessly Windows on ARM works with emulation – given that most apps aren’t natively coded for ARM (but x86 instead). Microsoft’s Prism emulation layer is key to achieving this – and the company will need to make progress with software compatibility and smoothness, as we’re not quite there yet with Prism.
It’s still very early days for Prism and Copilot+ PCs in general, and bold predictions like Omdia’s are a bit of a given. That said, major growth in AI-enabled PCs isn’t something that can be ruled out, and in fact feels like a distinct possibility, but a lot of that can also be summed up in the AI features that Microsoft is planning to spice up Copilot+ PCs with. Of course, things didn’t get off to a great start on that front with the Recall debacle, and things have gone awfully quiet on that particular feature lately, perhaps ominously.