Market analyst Gartner predicts a global increase in AI PCs and smartphones by 2024. The only question is whether they really offer relevant added value.

Gartner Inc. expects a total of 54.4 million AI PCs and 240 million AI smartphones to be sold worldwide by the end of 2024. That is 29 million more than in the previous year. The impact of AI is now undeniable, and chip and laptop manufacturers are trying to capitalize on it. In reality, the AI ​​PC or smartphone is an empty concept. As long as AI works through the cloud, any laptop or smartphone with a good internet connection and a browser will have access to the most advanced generative AI models.

What is an AI PC?

Gartner defines AI PCs as PCs equipped with dedicated AI accelerators or cores, neural processing units (NPUs), accelerated processing units (APUs), or tensor processing units (TPUs), designed to optimize on-device AI tasks and to execute faster. Smartphones are devices with hardware or software that integrate generative AI functions. According to Gartner, they can run a local base model or a custom AI model that creates derivative versions of content, strategies, designs or methodologies. An example of this is GPT-4 from OpenAI or Gemini Nano from Google.

These new AI devices are equipped with specialized hardware and software to perform AI tasks better and faster. But is that really necessary? There are no multitudes of local AI workloads overloading the classic CPU cores. The AI ​​hype as we now know it does exist, but it mainly takes place in the cloud. To use generative AI, all you need is an internet connection and a browser, not an AI PC or smartphone.

Gartner’s expectations that AI PCs and smartphones will generate strong sales in 2024 are therefore more likely the result of a good marketing stunt by manufacturers to sell these AI devices. A lot still needs to be done before AI PCs and smartphones become truly relevant in the future.