Microsoft has a lot more than AI riding on Copilot+ PCs. Although AI is the current buzzword in the tech industry, Microsoft’s push into a new era of PCs has just as much to do with declining PC sales in recent years, as well as its decade-long drive to make Windows work on ARM.

Contents

• A simple question
• Aiming higher
• Caught in limbo

With so much going on, it has made me wonder what the real reason and motivation behind Microsoft’s transition might be. Copilot+ PCs are a new category of device that, yes, come with some AI features, but I firmly believe that this transition may have more to do with addressing a stagnant Windows laptop market rather than simply relying on AI.

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A simple question

I know it may seem crazy that a tech announcement in 2024 wouldn’t solely be about AI, but ask yourself this: Why do I need a Copilot+ PC to access Microsoft’s new AI features? According to Microsoft, it comes down to the hardware requirements of a Copilot+ PC. In order to be part of the cool kids’ club, a PC needs a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with at least 40 Tera Operations Per Second (TOPS) of power.

That’s a significant amount compared to what we’ve seen so far. Intel’s Meteor Lake NPU can only handle around 10 TOPS, while AMD’s Ryzen 8040 chips have around 16 TOPS. The Snapdragon X Elite offers 45 TOPS, and Intel’s upcoming Lunar Lake CPUs have over 40 TOPS. However, there’s a small issue: You don’t actually need an NPU for AI applications. You can use your graphics card, and it’s much more powerful than an NPU. Nvidia says its current-generation graphics cards offer anywhere from 200 TOPS for the cheapest option to 1,300 TOPS at the high end, and that’s for both desktops and laptops.

I’m not promoting Nvidia here – they did a lot of that during the lead-up to the Copilot+ reveal – but it’s a legitimate question. If you already have a PC with the AI processing power Microsoft requires, why can’t you use it? In that context, the push into the era of AI PCs seems less about AI and more about selling new laptops. And that seems to be a key part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ strategy.

Aiming higher

PCs haven’t been selling very well. After a huge boom in 2020 and 2021 for obvious reasons, the PC market has slowed down significantly in the years since. That’s not unexpected, but the outlook for PC sales remains bleak. Gartner’s preliminary figures for last year showed 241.8 million PCs shipped, which is the lowest since 2006.

Microsoft only accounts for a small portion of the PC hardware market with its Surface devices, but more laptops shipped – especially those with Windows installed – is still a good thing for the company. Coupled with stiff competition from Apple’s M-series laptops like the MacBook Air and over a decade of trying to make ARM instructions work on Windows, there’s a clear incentive for Copilot+ to succeed.

With Copilot+, Microsoft can align the stars. We now have the Snapdragon X Elite chip, which uses ARM instructions to power AI applications, extend battery life, and offer competitive performance. And Microsoft can leverage the chip to promote its AI agenda. It’s a perfect plan, and Microsoft is likely to sell a lot of laptops through it. But I’m not sure it will convince the larger Windows user base to embrace AI.

There are already privacy concerns with Copilot+, and there are many unanswered questions about how an AI PC will actually work in practice. By limiting Copilot+ to a small number of devices, even though there are other PCs with the necessary AI hardware available, Microsoft is slowing down the pace at which users can experience what AI can bring to their computers.

It doesn’t seem like this is a permanent solution. Features like Recall are in a beta stage, and Microsoft says they will eventually be available through a Windows Update for users with compatible hardware. However, there’s no timeline for that. If you already have a powerful GPU or bought one of the dozens of “AI PCs” we saw last year, you’ll have to buy a new laptop again to see what the AI era truly has to offer.

Caught in limbo

Eventually, the balance between AI-compatible hardware and software will be achieved. Users will naturally upgrade to devices with NPUs, and they will become more powerful, and Microsoft will start rolling out its AI features to a wider user base. However, at the moment, we are stuck in a limbo.

Copilot+, in its current limbo state, is about much more than just AI. It is a turning point for ARM on Windows and a crucial turning point for the decline in laptop sales in recent years. Time will tell whether these two aspects will pay off, but for now, it is clear that Microsoft’s ambitions with Copilot+ are greater than just a few new AI features.