Forrester advises IT leaders to resist the AI PC until 2025

ICT analyst firm Forrester is telling IT leaders to ignore pressure to buy first generation AI PCs in 2024, but to start preparing for 2025.

“AI PCs will remain a niche innovation opportunity in 2024 as IT leaders prepare for a widespread refresh in 2025,” the firm said in a new report.

“However, given the cost, security, privacy, and potential productivity benefits of AI PCs long term, IT leaders should take a cautious, exploratory approach to AI PCs in 2024.”

AI PCs wouldn’t gain traction in 2024 because there was still no “killer app” for the average information worker, the firm said.

Principal analyst Andrew Hewitt said while Forrester expected most IT organisations to eventually adopt AI PCs, the “mass embrace” of the new machines wouldn’t happen until 2025.

“While the user experience improvements of the AI PC are important, what the industry is forgetting is that user experience improvements almost never change IT purchasing behavior,” he said.

“Cost, security, privacy, and the upcoming Windows 10 end of life will be primary drivers of AI PC adoption, with the added bonus of a much-improved user experience.”

Instead of buying first generation AI PCs, organisations should educate themselves and prepare for the AI PC by identifying personas that would benefit from an AI PC now, Forrester advised.

The application ecosystem that could benefit most from a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) in their machines centred around creativity.

“Applications for video/photo editing, music production, and graphics design have plenty of use cases that can utilise an NPU, such as voice and instrument isolation, person masking, automatic reframe, and object removal.”

Because the productivity impact here could be massive, organisations should consider their creatives as a first test group for the AI PC.

After that, high-compute users such as engineers and developers could also benefit from the improved performance of a dedicated NPU.

Executives were also likely candidates due to the handful of apps that support tasks like speech practicing, resume building and presentation creation.