Tech

Apple's “Mac killer” may be lurking in new AI-powered Windows PCs

Mike Fabus

Qualcomm in a strong position, but AMD and Intel may be vulnerable

The Copilot+ laptop comes at just the right time for Qualcomm, proving to be a breakthrough in Snapdragon performance.

Windows PC makers, Microsoft, retailers, and especially Qualcomm are all excited about the new Copilot+ laptops being a Mac killer, and from what I've seen so far, they might be onto something.

In the Windows ecosystem, the new Copilot+ laptops are seen as the first serious counterpunch to the MacBook Air, Apple's (AAPL) ultra-thin laptop series that has been gaining market share with its snappy performance and long battery life since being redesigned in late 2020 around the tech giant's own M-series chips.

New laptops from Acer (TW:2353), Asus (TW:2357), Dell (DELL), HP (HPQ), Lenovo (HK:992), Microsoft (MSFT) and Samsung (KR:005930) could pose a potential threat to not only Apple's MacBook Air business, but other companies as well, including the PC market's major suppliers, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel (INTC).

That's because all 22 Copilot+ systems currently on sale are built on wireless pioneer Qualcomm's (QCOM) Snapdragon X-series, rather than x86 processors from Intel or AMD. The X-series is the only laptop processor line so far that meets Microsoft's artificial intelligence acceleration requirements for Copilot+.

It will be several months before systems equipped with Ryzen AI 300 and Lunar Lake, AMD and Intel's first processors with AI-specific processing power, are available and certified by Microsoft for Copilot+.

Early indications are that the first wave of Snapdragon-based laptops are selling like hotcakes, and having reviewed two of them myself (the Asus Vivobook S 15 for nearly two weeks and Lenovo's Yoga Slim 7X over the past few days), I know exactly why.

The Present and Future of Generative AI

This is the third year of generative AI, a time marked by the shift of capabilities from the cloud to smartphones, laptops, and other personal electronic devices. On-device generative AI processing makes technology faster, more personal, and more private. And new AI accelerators called neural processing units (NPUs) are emerging to handle the load with little impact on battery life.

As NPUs become available, major technology companies are seeking to represent on-device AI, striving to be first to deliver breakthrough technologies.

Smartphones are emerging as the next generation of consumer convenience, as evidenced by Alphabet (GOOGL) and Samsung, and belatedly embraced by Apple, and already offer things like fast photo search and editing, real-time translation, and a really cool feature called Circle to Search.

Meanwhile, the business side of generative AI is beginning to take shape on your laptop, helping to augment everyday tasks like illustrating proposals, uncovering valuable insights in your notes, and adding live captions to meetings.

This may help explain why demand for on-device AI acceleration appears to be growing faster in the commercial segment than in the consumer space: At least some companies are now intrigued by the low-power AI acceleration capabilities of Snapdragon-based laptops, and have ordered several systems to spur development.

For now, at least, consumers appear to be more drawn to the performance and battery life of the new laptops than to the on-device AI. Retail sales of the Copilot+ laptops were rumored to have remained steady during the pre-order period, even after Microsoft announced it was delaying the release of Copilot+'s flagship feature, Recall.

Copilot+: Promising work in progress

Copilot+ is still in development: its big feature, Recall (an always-on assistant that can help you sift through all your digital items), is delayed, and another feature called Cocreator, which lets you paint as you sketch, is still a bit rough around the edges.

But some features available today offer a glimpse into what efficient AI computing could bring to the laptop experience. One is live captions. Sure, many apps already offer live captions, but it would be nice to have this feature available as you jump in and out of meetings on various video conferencing platforms.

The breakout moment

Qualcomm may have a real winner on its hands: Its early ecosystem support and sales success is all the more impressive when you consider how far Windows on Snapdragon has come since Qualcomm launched the program six and a half years ago.

For years the platform lay invisible, which was ultimately a good thing given its poor performance and incompatibility. In the fall of 2018, I was trying to buy an early Windows-on-Snapdragon system at Best Buy, but no one could find one, even though it had been on the market for about six weeks at that point. Finally, a store manager found me the system, which was the first one the store had sold. He asked me to take a photo with him and the laptop.

Now, the Copilot+ laptop has been shown to deliver breakthrough Snapdragon performance, so the timing is right for Qualcomm.

Ever since a surge in demand for PCs for pandemic-era work-from-home applications plateaued three years ago, PC makers and retailers have been hungry for new products to boost them, and Qualcomm's slim, powerful X-series processors, the only ones currently capable of powering Microsoft's generative AI platform, seem like a natural fit.

As the old saying goes, it's better to be lucky than good, but in this case, Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X series could be a mix of both.

Mike Fabus is a principal analyst at FabusTech, an independent market research firm in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Plus: Apple's massive share buybacks prove companies are bad at market timing

Also read: Nvidia currently rules the AI world, but these tech giants could be next

-Mike Fabus

This content was produced by MarketWatch, an operation of Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(End) Dow Jones Newswires

06-26-24 1646ET

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