With an increasing number of customers now prepared to undergo a refresh cycle to switch over to AI-enabled PCs, Acer plans to sharply increase shipments of its computers equipped with those features.
Acer will raise the share of Copilot+ PCs – those designed to run AI developed by Microsoft – among deliveries to 40 per cent by the third quarter of 2025, Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen told Nikkei.
In Australia, Acer’s range of AI PCs includes the Swift 14 AI, Swift Go AMD, and Swift Go 14, among others.
The AI tasks that these Copilot PCs can undertake include image generation and real-time subtitled translations of online meetings.
Equipped with neural processing units, the devices can undertake tens of trillions of operations per second to execute these functions on-device and offline too.
At present, these advanced NPUs are mainly supplied by Qualcomm, though Intel and AMD are moving forward with mass production of the semiconductors too.
Acer has committed to releasing Copilot+ PCs that are equipped with NPUs from each maker.
Major competitors such as Lenovo Group and HP are also focusing on Copilot+ PC sales. This week, HP broke a two year streak of consecutive quarterly declines to record a profit in the third quarter fiscal of this year.
Worldwide shipments reached 64.9 million PCs in the second quarter of 2024, a year-on-year growth of 3 per cent, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). It was the second consecutive quarter of growth following seven consecutive quarters of decline.
The top five brands leading global PC shipments were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple and Acer group. Acer rounded off the list of the top five manufacturers with 4.4 million units shipped in the second quarter of this year giving it a market share of 6.8 per cent, according to IDC.
“Two consecutive quarters of growth, combined with plenty of market hype around AI PCs and a less sexy but arguably more important commercial refresh cycle, seems to be what the PC market needed. The buzz is clearly around AI, but a lot is happening with non-AI PC purchasing to make this mature market show signs of positivity,” said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Device Trackers.
