“It’s almost mind boggling” – Dell is betting big on AI PCs, but customers are less enthusiastic

The refrain that Dell is “all in” on AI PCs rang out across the company’s annual Dell Technologies World 2025. This sentiment has been underlined by the product and partnership announcements made throughout the event and indeed earlier in the year at CES.

Customers, however, seem less convinced of the urgency to adopt AI hardware, particularly when it comes to laptop and desktop devices.

“We still see a huge part of the market still buying non AI-PCs, and it's almost mind boggling that when they're refreshing to Windows 11, that they wouldn't be buying probably the most important thing to future proof,” Kevin Terwilliger, VP & GM of commercial, consumer, and gaming PCs at Dell Technologies, told a roundtable of journalists.

Asked by ITPro if this could be down to budgetary constraints and organizations buying hardware that’s “good enough”, Terwilliger said even the uptake of Windows 11-compatible devices that don’t have AI features is behind where the company would expect it to be.

“If you were to look at the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10, where we are right now in the mix of PCs that are already on Windows 11, we're about 30 points behind the same timing of where we were in the transition to Windows 10,” he said.

“So what's actually happening is all of those customers are waiting, waiting and waiting and waiting to get the full consideration set, because everybody has been talking about these additional architectures that have been coming out.

“I would argue that actually the PC refresh has not really taken off. There are a few countries where it has, medium business has started to move, but there's still a ton of PCs that need to be refreshed between now and October, and so many of them were waiting for that full consideration.”

Consequently, Terwilliger said the uptake of Windows 11-compatible PCs will be “way more compressed” than the previous refresh cycle.

Alexandre Brousse, head of partners EMEA at Dell Technologies, agrees that customers have been waiting to see what AI hardware comes out before upgrading.

“We have a very old install base when I compare it to three years ago or even before COVID, it's much, much older,” Brousse told ITPro. “One of the reasons is definitely because customers were waiting for AI products to be available in the market. I think when you look at what is happening right now, many customers need to refresh – it's not like they have a choice.”

When it comes to what devices are being chosen, however, Brousse sees a variety of strategies in play. SMBs and ‘prosumers’ may be more interested in AI PCs out of the gate as “they like to have something which is a little bit fun”.

“They also like to have functionality which is natively available,” Brousse said, “They don't really care that [the data] is shared with Microsoft, etc. So we are selling a lot of AI PCs because they want to use Copilot Plus.”

“When you look at big companies it depends on the agreement they have with Microsoft on Copilot Plus or not,” he continued, “but they all have an AI strategy about what they want to deploy in the year to come. They all know as well that even if they won't use AI right now, they will still benefit from the better battery life, which is much better with the AI PC with the NPU (neural processing unit).”

Terwilliger made a similar comment, saying: “A lot of the consultancies coming in … say, ‘Oh, you should be buying a $899 PC’. And because of all of the information in the market around AI, I think they're missing a little bit of the point that, even if you set AI aside, the PC on the latest processor is tremendously better.”

Dell sees mid-market challenges

It’s in the mid-market where Brousse sees the most pragmatism and most cost awareness, however.

“For these customers, it's really about what they want to have and there's a reason why we're offering the choice today,” Brousse said. “They want to have the right balance but if it’s just a cost discussion, what they say generally is they want to take perhaps the one that’s ok for now and probably would refresh, not after five years, but after two or three years.”

“It depends on what they want to do with their PC, how long they want to keep them. There is no one size fits all here,” he said. “What I can tell you is what I observe: there’s an acceleration of the demand [for AI PCs] and that’s confirmed by the distributors.”

“​​I really think I can't imagine the world where in two years and three years [businesses] will still not have AI PCs, honestly, because, in the end, it’s a competitive advantage,” he concluded.

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