Windows 11 tops AI as main driver for PC sales

The growth in the volume of PCs that have been bought with AI capabilities has been more by default than design, with the Windows 11 refresh being the driving factor in the current wave of hardware purchases.

Although the majority of PCs being sold are AI-enabled and vendors continue to roll out fresh products, that functionality has not been the key consideration in upgrading and is unlikely to be for some time, according to Kieran Jessop, analyst at Omdia. With support for Windows 10 ending on 14 October, the need to move to an updated and secure OS has been the theme of 2025 and has resulted in hardware sales growth.

“The commercial refresh has been holding up the market this year, and the reasons why growth is in the green for this year is because of Windows 11 refresh. It’s the fundamentals of the PC business, as opposed to anything ... towards trying to get an AI PC or AI-capable PC specifically,” he said. “We still see good traction with AI PCs, but a lot of that is due to the nature of just how many AI PCs are out there.”

There are some customers looking for AI, but that remained a select number – broadly speaking, the wish list from customers around making a PC buying choice continued to look familiar.

“It would be an incredibly niche set of customers whose first priority [would be] AI capability. Most consumers and businesses alike are looking for a similar experience from their laptop, which is performance and battery life, extra commercial pieces, compatibility with your existing application base or software base, and then the manageability of the PC fleet as well,” said Jessop.

He said those factors influencing buying decisions were unlikely to change in the immediate future, and the outlook for the next four years saw global annual shipments of PCs growing at a CAGR of around the 1.1% mark.

“It is highly replacement driven,” he said. “We are seeing some white space on the board getting coloured in, especially in APAC, with especially lower-cost devices, but then there’s a bifurcation [with] a strong premium segment in emerging or developing economies as well. I think that’s where some net new will happen.

“But for the most part, I can’t imagine that people even in a few years will be making decisions for hinging on how AI works with their system – at least when it comes to the sort of the fundamentals, the bread and butter.”

Even with the end-of-life support for Windows 10 next week, significant numbers of customers remain on the operating system, and the need to refresh hardware will continue to be a market driver in 2026.

“Globally, about half of the install base is left to update most of those older devices that are six years plus that were ineligible didn’t meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11,” said Jessop. “The second 50% of adoption in the commercial segment is going to come much quicker, because first year of Extended Security Updates (ESU) cost is $30 per user or per device, and it doubles in year two, and then it doubles again in year three.

“So, some businesses enterprises have budgeted in a year of ESU, but once the price doubles, you don’t want to budget that in, because it’s essentially a large percentage of the actual cost of buying new devices,” he added.

Analysts tracking PC sales have noted the positive impact of the Windows 11 refresh, but many have also included the attraction of gaining an AI-capable device as one of the main attractions.