Microsoft’s Copilot+ “AI PC” Laptops To See Massive Growth By Up To 533.5% & 39.4 Million Arm & x86 Shipments In 2025

With the help of Arm CPUs, Microsoft Copilot+ "AI PC" laptops are expected to see huge growth from 800K shipments in 2024 to over 58 million units by 2029.

The huge demand for AI hardware has impacted the PC sales of specialized hardware dramatically in 2024. The AI PC shipment growth has doubled in the second quarter of 2024 compared to Q1 and is now expected to increase exponentially next year.

According to Omdia's AI Notebook PC shipment forecast data, Microsoft's Arm-based laptops will see up to 533.5% annual growth by 2025, resulting in a staggering jump from 800,000 laptop shipments to 5.2 million.

This is going to be the highest shipment increase ever but the annual year-on-year growth will keep increasing every year, at least till 2029. Even though the growth rate will be significantly lower than in 2025, the shipments of Arm-based Microsoft notebooks will increase up to 14.5 million units in 2026. In 2027, it's expected that the shipments will almost double with a 94.6% growth rate, accounting for up to 28.3 million units.

In 2028, the shipment size will increase to 47.7 million units, and in 2029, it will be close to 59 million units. While the YoY growth for the x86 chip-based laptops will keep increasing every year as well, the total share for the Microsoft AI NBPC (Notebook PC) based on Arm chips is expected to be as high as 32.7% compared to 15% in 2025.

There are two major reasons for this rapid growth in Arm-based Microsoft laptops, which Omdia describes in some detail. The first reason Omdia states referring to Generative AI technology is:

"...This new technological breakthrough will greatly reduce the barriers to entry in the Content Creator Market, allowing users who do not have any prior knowledge of image/video creation to easily and time-saving image/video creation by using AI laptops or AI tablets."

Furthermore, the generative AI technology will assist teachers with compiling teaching materials with "vivid and interactive images/audio-visual materials in less time". The second reason is its competitiveness with Apple laptops since Apple doesn't offer a discrete GPU, making Arm-based Microsoft laptops a better alternative that consumes less power but can also offer higher GPU-computing performance.

As Arm processors are highly power-efficient and bring the SoC design with CPU, GPU, Wi-Fi, NPU, and other mobile data networks built-in, they are highly versatile, affordable, and can do a variety of operations. Omdia says:

"...If Microsoft introduces an AI gaming or AI creator laptop with a 45-80 watt thermal design power (ARM) chip with a discrete graphics card (Discrete-GPU), and compresses the thickness of the laptop to close to the institutional thickness of Apple's MacBook Pro (within 16 mm) through the thin and light function of OLED displays, it will cause a crisis in Apple's MacBook Pro sales."

This is the first scenario but the second scenario is also possible, which is Microsoft's involvement in creating more Arm-based products just as Apple produces several computing products based on M-series chips such as small desktop computers and all-in-one products.

With that said, the x86 segment will continue to thrive thanks to the new Copilot+ "AI PC" platform from Microsoft. The shipments are projected to see major jumps too, hitting 34.2 million units next year, 60.7 million units in 2026, 91.3 million units in 2027, 107.7 million units in 2028 & 121 million units by 2029.

The main solution providers in this field will be AMD & Intel, both of which have new hardware either launched in the form of Ryzen AI 300 or coming soon in the form of Lunar Lake for 2024.

Moving on, the Arm AI PC segment is also expected to heat up with the likes of NVIDIA's SOCs made in collaboration with MediaTek and others but we are still in the early phase of the "AI PC" era and have to see how the market reacts to current hardware to get an idea of whether the AI PC market is the hype every company is making it to be or if things will fade out in a few years and the industry will move on to the next big thing or buzzword to market their products.