Date: 19/02/2024

Gartner forecast AI PCs and GenAI Smartphones to take a share of 22% in 2024

With the significant launch of SoCs for PCs and smartphones integrated with exclusive silicon for artificial intelligence (AI) by the end of 2023, Gartner's forecast projects worldwide shipments of AI PCs and GenAI smartphones to reach 295 million units by the close of 2024, marking a substantial leap from the 29 million units recorded in 2023.

Gartner defines AI PCs as those equipped with specialized AI accelerators or cores, neural processing units (NPUs), accelerated processing units (APUs), or tensor processing units (TPUs). These enhancements are designed to optimize and expedite AI tasks directly on the device, eliminating the reliance on external servers or cloud services. This advancement ensures superior performance and efficiency in handling AI and GenAI workloads.

GenAI smartphones represent a new era in mobile technology, boasting hardware and software capabilities tailored for seamless integration and execution of GenAI-driven features and applications. These smartphones can locally execute base or fine-tuned AI models, generating innovative versions of content, strategies, designs, and methodologies. Notable examples include Google's Gemini Nano, Baidu's ERNIE, and OpenAI's GPT-4.

By the end of 2024, Gartner estimates a remarkable 240 million GenAI smartphones and 54.5 million AI PCs to be shipped worldwide, collectively representing 22% of both basic and premium smartphones and all PCs for the year. This surge underscores the accelerating adoption and integration of AI across various technological domains, promising groundbreaking advancements and innovations on the horizon.

This transformative shift towards AI-powered devices heralds a new era of possibilities, where intelligent computing and generative capabilities redefine the boundaries of innovation, productivity, and user experience in the digital realm.

“The rapid adoption of on-device GenAI capabilities and AI processors will eventually become a standard requirement for technology vendors,” said Ranjit Atwal, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. “This ubiquity will pose challenges for vendors in differentiating themselves from competitors, making it harder to create unique selling points and drive increased revenues.”

The smartphone market recorded its first quarter of growth in 4Q23 after nine consecutive quarters of decline. In 2024, worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to grow 4.2%, totalling 1.2 billion units year over year. “We should not interpret the growth in smartphone shipments as a full-fledged recovery,” said Atwal. “It is more accurate to view it as a stabilization of lower level of units, which are nearly 60 million lower than in 2022.”




AI PCs and GenAI Smartphones Market Share, Worldwide, 2023-2025
Source: Gartner

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