The neXt Curve reThink Podcast
The official podcast channel of neXt Curve, a research and advisory firm based in San Diego founded by Leonard Lee focused on the frontier markets and business opportunities forming at the intersect of transformative technologies and industry trends. This podcast channel features audio programming from our reThink podcast bringing our listeners the tech and industry insights that matter across the greater technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sector.
Topics we cover include:
-> Artificial Intelligence
-> Cloud & Edge Computing
-> Semiconductor Tech & Industry Trends
-> Digital Transformation
-> Consumer Electronics
-> New Media & Communications
-> Consumer & Industrial IoT
-> Telecommunications (5G, Open RAN, 6G)
-> Security, Privacy & Trust
-> Immersive Reality & XR
-> Emerging & Advanced ICT Technologies
Check out our research at www.next-curve.com.
The neXt Curve reThink Podcast
What's up with AI PC? (with Anurag Agrawal and Prakash Sangam)
Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Work n' Play Tech Series of the neXt Curve reThink Podcast, the series that brings you deep tech and industry analysis on the world of consumer and commercial devices and services. This podcast is geared toward enterprise IT and consumers looking for industry and tech trends that will matter as they choose, implement, and manage technologies for organization and/or personal utility and entertainment.
The Work n' Play Tech Series is co-hosted by Leonard Lee, Executive Analyst at neXt Curve, Anurag Agrawal, Chief Global Analyst at Techaisle, and Prakash Sangam, Principal Analyst at Tantra Analyst.
In this inaugural episode, the hosts discuss the headline trend of 2024, the AI PC. How did it start, where are we today, and where do we think we are going. The hosts also provide their impressions of several AI PCs they have been recently testing including:
💻 Lenovo's X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition (powered by Intel's Core Ultra Series 2 Lunar Lake)
💻 Lenovo's Yoga Slim 7x (powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite)
💻 Dell's XPS 13 (powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite)
💻 Samsung Book4 Elite (powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite)
💻 Apple MacBook Air 15" (powered by Apple Silicon M2)
The gang touch on the following topics on the subject of the AI PC:
➡️ Introducing co-hosts Anurag Agrawal and Prakash Sangam (2:07)
➡️ Introducing the Work n' Play Series on neXt Curve's reThink Podcast (3:20)
➡️ The gang kicks off Episode 1 with the AI PC (4:07)
➡️ What is the state of the AI PC and where is it going? (6:50)
➡️ The AI PC in a state of "experimentation" & discovery (11:13)
➡️ Is the AI PC and GenAI finding a home with creators? (16:04)
➡️ The outlook for the big AI PC refresh super cycle (20:24)
➡️ What are the differentiated use cases for the AI PC? (21:08)
➡️ The cost benefit analysis of upgrading to AI PC (25:38)
➡️ Key AI PC takeaways & highlights from CES 2025 (28:50)
➡️ AI PC Reviews & favorites from Lenovo, Dell, and Samsung (36:15)
➡️ Agentic AI on AI PCs and beyond? (46:05)
Hit both Leonard, Anurag, and Prakash up on LinkedIn and take part in their industry and tech insights.
Check out Anurag and Techaisle at www.techaisle.com.
Check out Prakash and his research at Tantra Analyst at www.tantranalyst.com.
Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform.
Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com for the tech and industry insights that matter.
Next curve.
Leonard Lee:Hey everyone. Welcome to this next curve. Rethink podcast episode, where we break down the latest tech and industry events, happenings into the insights that matter. And I'm Leonard Lee, executive analyst at next curve and in this inaugural. Consumer and commercial tech series. we're going to be kicking things off with an intro to the podcast. So, you know, a little bit more about what we're going to try to do with the series and then, also introduce my co hosts. Who are Anna, excuse me, and a rug, uh, agrawal agrawal. Oh, my gosh, I'm really butchering that. I'm so sorry. I mean, I love this guy too.
Anurag Agrawal:How can I do this to you? No, I'm so sorry. Listen, don't worry about it. my wife says that I should have changed my name to Andy long time ago.
Leonard Lee:I
Anurag Agrawal:love
Leonard Lee:that. Yes, do that. Do that. But hey, look, this gentleman is a legend. He is an amazing individual. I'm so glad to be collaborating with you on this. he is the founder and the chief global analyst of tech aisle. And, we have our good friend Prakash Sangam of Contra Analysts. And of course, you know him as the founder. And the principal analyst and gentlemen, it's so good to have you guys on looking forward to this. Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:Glad to be here. Glad to be here, man.
Leonard Lee:Before we get started, please remember to like share, react, and comment on this episode. Also subscribe here on YouTube and on Buzzsprout and listen to us on your favorite podcast. also just want to make sure everyone knows that opinions and statements by my guests are strictly their own and don't reflect mine or those of NextCurve. And, we're doing this to provide an open forum for discussion and debate on all things consumer and commercial tech. So. With that, why don't you both take a moment to talk about your background and, your firm.
Anurag Agrawal:Leonard, thank you for having me on this podcast yes, I lead, TACAL, which is a global research and analyst firm focused on three very complex segments of the market. They are the small businesses, the mid sized businesses, and the channel partner community. And we derive our intelligence from the ground up, essentially, which means that we do tremendous amount of surveys with, these three segments, as well as have formal and informal dialogues with them.
Leonard Lee:Yeah, and it's really, really, amazing work that you and your team does. I just wanted to emphasize that into our audience. Make sure if you don't know who, you know, and tech, I'll are, you really should know, especially if you're In the, enterprise, S and B, tech game. So, uh, Prakash really quickly, everyone knows you already, but go ahead.
Prakash Sangam:Just like any normal tech industry analyst looking at wireless compute. glad to be here to give my opinion.
Leonard Lee:Of course. Yeah. Everyone knows you already. You've been on several times and it's really great to have honor on for the 1st time. And, yeah, so a little bit of context for what we're doing here. We're we really want to look at broadly. consumer and commercial slash enterprise tech. And so anything ranging from smartphones all the way to, workstations and what have you that whole breadth of, devices that, are pretty important segment of not only electronics industry. But, also for the semiconductor industry. So there's going to be a little bit of that tie in that we're going to have with all the semi stuff that, we, cover, but, really want to give the audience here a view from an end user perspective and, you know, the channel perspective, the OEM's perspective. And, bridge that divide, between a marks and the semiconductor industry. So, with that, we're going to kick things off with the AIPC because everyone talks about it. A lot of companies that we talk to. I mean, that's like the biggest thing, right? For the last couple of years, I think. Is it last couple of years or was it just last year? I think it really kind of went crazy last year. Right?
Prakash Sangam:Last year with, Microsoft making this big announcement, redefining PC with, copilot plus PCs, right? Last year, That's when we started and went into high gear with many launches and so on. it was their own event. right after the day before the event, they announced the set of Cooper Places based on, CalCom.
Anurag Agrawal:so yeah. Microsoft had a very specific event
Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:Where they actually. Brought in all the PC OEMs that they
announced,
Anurag Agrawal:and Dell was the one that came out right out of the gate with seven different models. To be fair, HP had announced their foray into AI PCs earlier, I think it was the winter of 2023.
Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:Dell came out, with some, really big announcement, their entire line up with Inspiron and Latitude and XPS and everything like that. They were all AI enabled PCs. Yes, which was actually the first one was the copilot plus BC and then. Later on, it started becoming AI pc.
Leonard Lee:Yep. Yeah. And if I'm not mistaken, the event was billed, right?
Prakash Sangam:built and then, and they had a first special day, the day before they actually went. Yeah. For co plus PCs. And actually, AI PCs were kind before copal plus PCs, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. so. I mean, the IPCs go pilot now everything clubbed under the IPCs. it's what's in the name, right? So,
Leonard Lee:yeah, and really the net new has been the MPU, right? That really is the big difference in terms of, the new IP on chip that, everybody was really making a big deal out of. And so a lot of this really originating out of AIPC. But then, as you mentioned. There was, the Copilot plus PC and, prior to that, of course, we had Meteor Lake that was announced the literally the year before. And then even prior to that, AMD had introduced their 1st generation of, um, let's say, let's call it AI capable. It wasn't, they didn't call, we didn't call them MPUs at the time. It was like, really weird. but even before then it was Apple, Apple Silicon, that was the first to have an MPU. and they, I think they really, they, they call neural engine, right? But it is basically you. And that was like, I mean, geez, are we're going on almost five years, but, yeah. So, Where do you guys think we are? what is the journey been like for the AI PC? And, where do you think it's going?
Anurag Agrawal:So I can start it off, Prakash, and obviously, our insights come from the data itself, right? So what we are finding within our research, and we did a global research of over 2, 200 businesses that covered SMBs and enterprise customers, right? we find that There is an interest in AIPCs, right, and the interest is very kind of interesting in a way that let's first understand that these businesses actually at least 50 percent of them really think that AIPC could be the relevant foundation. That is the core AI foundation for their entire AI stack. So that is very interesting finding, right? Yeah. We also find that while AI PCs are seen as crucial for AI solutions, but the current adoption is kind of low. In a way, what we are seeing is that awareness is there, but only about 14 percent of the businesses are really thinking about purchasing AI PCs. On the other flip side is they are thinking more in terms of co pilot plus PC, which is very interesting that they are not able to connect the dots between what's a co pilot plus PC versus an AI PC, right?
Leonard Lee:Yeah, interesting. Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:So I think that's, going to be interesting as to how you bridge that education gap as to what is an AI PC and what's a co pilot plus PC.
Prakash Sangam:Yeah, I, my pet peeve is. They want a PC, whoever is buying it, they don't know yet what they'll use it for, right? Most of the guys who are buying these latest PCs, more for performance and battery life and, you know, all the premium features they offer, because I mean, you know, frankly, if you are in the market for a premium PC. You want it or not, you'll buy a copilot plus PC, right? Because that's where they're starting. I still don't see a lot of applications. They're, they're, they're buying the species for a. The application they're dying to run on. It's basically, we are in the upgrade cycle. We know AI is becoming big. There will be use cases and workloads. We have to, be ready for when that happens. That's the reason let's start, buying these things so that we have a good solid foundation. At least that's what I found. It is true.
Anurag Agrawal:but also we are finding that many of these customers are thinking about how they can break up the. The user workflow, right? Because with the A. I. Coming into the picture, which workflows can run into the cloud. How can that orchestrate with what is running on the P. C. Versus on on Prem solution?
And
Anurag Agrawal:we are seeing there are four or five different use cases popping up
quite
Anurag Agrawal:One is, you know, obviously the Yeah. Code generation, right? Hey, listen, let me run the code. Let me write new code locally on my PC, by deploying some LLM models, or even having, small language models. And I will come to that in a minute because I've also deployed deep seek on my, XPS 13 as well as on, on my think pack, Yeah. So that works actually. Great. The other use cases we are seeing is around. Data analysis and client insights generation, right? that means, I don't need to be connected to a cloud. I can run some quick data analysis, on my. Laptop itself, or if I'm within a customer environment, then I can showcase what will happen, whether I'm in construction or utilities or any type of, dental or healthcare situation. We are seeing a lot. They are also experimentation going on in some targeted advertising or campaign creation. And optimization. Those are elements that are workflows that are running locally within the AI PCs. but Prakash, you're right that, this is a PC that is in still search of use cases and the problem it is trying to solve.
Leonard Lee:you use the term experimenting and experimental quite a bit. So, yeah, I mean, I guess that's really where we're at. Right? 1 of the 1 of the things that I've noticed also is. there really aren't that many applications or functions or features, that take advantage of the MPU. And so one of the races that I think all of the chip makers are making at the moment is to get the software or ISVs and developers to start coding to the. MPU, Or porting certain things, some of the applications actually tend to be kind of boring or really narrow and function, but I think ultimately my, my observation is this over the course of the latter part of last year and coming into this year. Is actually the CPU is more important than, uh, the MPU when it comes to the AI PC, because like you were saying, Prakash, battery life has really been the biggest change that I've seen over the past. Year and a half, or maybe about a year, right? Especially with the introduction of, devices that are running on the Snapdragon X series, you see that dramatic change, but then now with, Intel and AMD having made bets, I guess, in reaction to the Nuvia acquisition, really bringing some of that, um, CPU, um, uh, CPU. Efficiency power efficiency to bear and even, architecting and bringing micro architectures that are geared more toward, more performant, but also power efficient compute.
Prakash Sangam:Talking about Microsoft talk about redefining pieces with AI. I think that redefining is true, but it is at least right now is more on the battery life, right? I mean, day to day battery life, you've been talking about for like what, five, six, seven years, but the laptops that came last year, starting from Excelid and later with Lunar Lake are the real ones where you are realizing that seeing a full day battery life without a charger, really. Right. That is an important transformation In my view. I think that there is huge scope, especially in the enterprise. I would like to hear what the press was thinking on rock from your survey. If you take the security applications, MDM applications, the device management applications which are running all the time that PC is running on the background and they eat a lot of CPU resources. So for example, I've seen it literally, you take a brand new laptop running really good in a very good battery life. super fast, the moment you put on a corporate image, that kinds of, brings it to heart, the performance speed goes almost, two third of what I had seen and battery life was really bad. I think one of the reasons is there are lots of the corporate image. So a lot of this security and other applications. Which are running all the time, which I think would be efficiently run on NPU. So, I hope there is more, development on that. And while we are looking for the boondoggle on AIU's case.
Anurag Agrawal:Yeah, it's true. And I think, you know, along with the battery life, the weight, I think some or the other with the Snapdragon PCs, they've managed to kind of keep the weight extremely, extremely light. Which are one of the two very important criteria for PC brand and PC selection for most of the organization. And you are right, Prakash, because what we are saying again, quoting some stats here, that the early adopters of AI PCs we are seeing are within the IT department.
Prakash Sangam:Yeah,
Anurag Agrawal:77 percent of the organizations are actually using these AIPCs internally with the IT department. Also, why? Because of the fact that, they are the vanguard for AIPC adoption. They are the one who are actually testing it out, making sure they are suitable and what kind of additional services or support requirements will be there, what's what type of other, optimization they will need to do. So I think that is where it is going on. The other thing is, the C suite is saying, okay, you know what? I need to have the new shiny toy and AI PCs kind of fit that bill. So we are seeing that there is a tremendous amount of adoption there. But one thing that you talked about this, the security and the image and all that. AIPC would be more effective in this endpoint management, endpoint security capabilities. What that looks like, we don't know yet. I think that story needs to be told because the speed of threat detection is a top priority. And if AI can accelerate that, that is fantastic.
Leonard Lee:Yeah, These are great points. And, the other thing that I know that you mentioned in our conversation is, you would think that, there's a lot of talk about the AI PCs catering to create it. Right? Because of the generative. Aspect of what we're looking at with copilot. I mean, AI is a really broad domain or field of study. now we have generative AI. And so you would think that there would even with these, definitely enterprise. There's a lot of talk about it, That there would be a lot of use. or interest, amongst creatives, within an organization. But it sounds like you're seeing something different, At least for SMBs.
Anurag Agrawal:Right. I remember our conversation about this. Yes. So it was really interesting. Yes, it is interesting because within the assembly segment, also we are seeing not all SMBs have got content creators internally, right? Because they outsource many of their marketing function, right? So you would imagine that because of this AI capabilities coming into the picture, they would bring some of this in house, right? But then they have not been able to hire that skillsets. Yes, they have got marketing heads and all that. But only about 22 percent of these SMBs are actually utilizing AI PCs for their content, creating content creation. But the funny thing is, so we went and observed a few SMBs As to how they are creating new content, So it is very interesting what they're doing, They're saying, you know what, I really don't need an AI PC to create content because what they're doing is, taking a snapshot of their PowerPoint slide, for example, putting into Gemini flash 2. Saying, hey, write some text around this, and this is my objective, right? They take the text, extract it, put that into, ChatGPT or Copilot, if they've already subscribed to Copilot. And they said, rewrite this. Yeah, right. And they rewrite this and then they type, hey, expand on it. and then they say, you know what, create some video image, whether they have subscribed to, to, Adobe, or they are looking at Canva or something like that, like create an image for this. And the start to plug that in, that's the process of creating the content, right? And then say, you know what, for this, I don't require a local PC localized to really generate that. So it's very interesting how these SMBs are all experimenting. If I can use that word again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really create that content.
Prakash Sangam:and the reason is none of these creative suite, right? For example, Adobe suite, Are available on AIPCZ, all of them work still on the cloud and I mean, like for, you know, image generation is kind of far, far along the way, but there's a lot of video generation, tools coming. Sora is the one which popularizes it. There are quite a few. A lot of them still run on the cloud. They are not running on the device yet, and especially most of the professional crowd uses those professional tools. You know, they don't run them AIPCs. I mean, hopefully soon, but not right now. I don't see any of these creative tools basically making a announcement or anything that they'll have this on the, on the, on the AIPCs. So.
Leonard Lee:Yeah. I mean, I really wanted to point this out because I think it's counterintuitive. It's counter to the actual. narrative and thinking around the A. I. P. C. Right? and so,
Prakash Sangam:yeah, and also in the create, I mean, remember the biggest value of running on the laptop was security, privacy, your company data, all of that, right? in the marketing sense, it has some relevance. I think it has even bigger sense when it comes to, Like the code generation that Anurag mentioned, you're working on a project or a product for yourself, you're generating code, those kinds of things you don't want to run on a cloud machine, right? For example, confidential, all of that. That's where I think a lot of value lies, right? Because you have to keep all the data on your network, on your machine.
Anurag Agrawal:I was at HP Amplify last year, and I was speaking with some of their HP partners, this is HP Inc, partners, and a few of them were from emerging market countries like India. And they were pretty bullish about this AI PCs because they said that, it gives them an opportunity to refresh the PCs within the Public sector of the government departments within a country like India, where they say, where the Internet connectivity is not required, or is it not necessary? So we can run some of those models or some of those analysis locally. Now, whether that has been put into practice or not, I do not know yet, but this was a different kind of an insight there. So let me
Leonard Lee:ask you both this. We all have AI PCs, we're all either, we either have, probably more than one, but we're testing out, we're using, let's put it this way, several, right? Where are you actually using it? Where and when and for what situation and for what value? I'm just really curious what you're, each of your. Are finding, is that value proposition that you're tuning into
Prakash Sangam:a couple of examples like this one, right? You use the, what is it called? The studio effects? Yeah, yeah, you know, like a PC feature, which basically zooms in, zooms out those things, right? knowing without knowing you are using them, right? So that is one for sure. And then, yeah. I use, the copilot plus on, Microsoft and then Gemini as well, just to anything, any query I run on board to just to do a benchmarking, whatever unofficial benchmarking. So I use the, the copilot button, they click quite a lot for, and if you're researching a company and a lot of times just testing out how bad it is Hallucinating and so on. So
Leonard Lee:those are very flattering things. Come on, you can do better than that.
Prakash Sangam:Right. translation, sometimes I do, let me put it this way other than, the, studio effects, I don't seem to use it for anything where. I would have done that on cloud AI, for example, right?
Leonard Lee:Hey, I think we should give him, an A for effort, right? Yes. So,
Anurag Agrawal:so I know absolutely right. I'm glad that at least you are using the studio effects because I also use the studio effects, but I don't remember to use it every single time.
Prakash Sangam:most of the time it is on running on the background.
Anurag Agrawal:Yes. so to be honest, right, he said that we have got several pieces. So all of a sudden you move from a think pad to yoga slam, or you move from one of them to an XPS 13 or latitude and you keep fiddling around with the settings. And you don't realize that. You have changed one thing or the other somewhere else. Right. but of late or the last two or three days, I did download the, the deep seek, uh, R1, right. Using, Lama interface and, running it both on, on the XPS 13 and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, it's absolutely awesome.
It
Anurag Agrawal:was great. I mean, yes, it's not like the, you know, 32 billion parameters, but I experimented with a smaller one. I think is the 7 billion one. It is. It is absolutely awesome. And I have the comfort that, none of my data is going anywhere because it is running locally. So I think that's where I started to use it.
Prakash Sangam:Can you run it without internet connection? yes
Anurag Agrawal:you can.
Prakash Sangam:Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:Okay.
Prakash Sangam:Like the, but the Microsoft one, you cannot because it says for compliance and security. although it's not sending the data to the server, the co-pilot plus, model but it needs internet connection. Without internet connection cannot not run.
Anurag Agrawal:No, you can, run it locally.
Prakash Sangam:Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:Yes. you have to download the interface called Ulama.
Prakash Sangam:Oh, okay.
Anurag Agrawal:then, Ulama and actually, and then, just run it locally. But if you go and try and deep seek on a perplexity or Amazon and all, then that, that's different internet.
Prakash Sangam:Yeah.
Leonard Lee:So I think Anurag gets a plus, right? That was well executed, sir.
Yeah,
Leonard Lee:good. Okay. But, that's more of a developer thing. That's not like a normal. No, no, no,
Anurag Agrawal:no, no, no. And also we are the cutting edge of. Technology adoption, which is not. The regular user.
Leonard Lee:Yeah. But although you never know in the very near future, that could be part of a enterprise deployment, right? You might have a enterprise approved, model set that is, officially designated by I. T. department as some can use. And it's pre deployed on your device. Are you seeing anything like that? Are you hearing anything about that? I don't hear of like, IT departments that have gone off and maybe kind of formalize the process of deploying, let's say certain approved models or something like that.
Anurag Agrawal:not yet, so there are two things, right? Because we cannot talk about AIPC deployment without talking about. Windows 11 refresh, right? Because of the fact that windows 10 end of support is coming up.
Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:Right. So now the question is. Should they extend it by paying that, 60 a fee per user, for the next extended support for the year or so, or should they go with an AIPC? So I think that ROI or the cost benefit analysis is still being done by many of the organizations. And I think not every PCOM has released all the models yet, right? And then they say, okay, should we still go with, Lunar Lake? Or should we just wait for the next version, which is going to come out anytime soon, So I think those are the questions which are there in front of, the IT department, right? and also what they are trying to say is, hey, maybe the productivity benefits. are yet unclear. At least 45 percent of them are saying that maybe price of PCs is too high,
right?
Anurag Agrawal:And there is not enough information and they are still trying to look for some kind of a,, direct advice from the experts, who can analyze the business needs and recommend suitable AI processes. Right. Which is the right processor for which type of workload. And I must say, I'm shamelessly plugging in Dell because I think what they have done is they've actually simplified their branding. And in a way they are saying, okay, for this type of workload, you can go with an AMD for this type of workload. You try Qualcomm and for this you can try Intel. So I think that's where they're guiding the end customer. What we are seeing that 48 percent of the businesses, both assemblies and enterprise across the board are saying, you know what, we are still wanting to know some more in depth analysis, comparing features, like performance benchmarks and target applications and so on and so forth. And then obviously 45 percent wants a real world example. So yeah, so that was a pretty long winded answer to your question, let me share 1 more point with you. 77 percent of the staff time is spent on PC procurement and deployment, out of which 89 percent of that time is being spent on PC support and maintenance activities. So now when you think about this large chunk of, IT support time is being spent on this, there's very little time to really do that analysis. What is the right PC for us to kind of deploy?
Prakash Sangam:It's basically more persona based as well, right? Maybe because of the battery life, like the executives who are on the run. obviously, as you said, they need the latest, shiny toy they get. And also the folks who are on the road, most of the time, like sales and business development guys who value. battery life and again, nothing to do with AI, but more for those reasons, those are the kind of first tier of folks who might be getting these, latest PCs, right?
Leonard Lee:So, hey, this is great insight and just, really. You're proving, Anurag, why you are the chief global analyst of your firm. It's like throwing out all kinds of amazing numbers. Awesome. we're all at CES. Just wanted to give you guys an opportunity to share. What were your impressions as it pertains to the AIPC? Of course, what were some of the impressions and key takeaways that you? got out of the event this year.
Anurag Agrawal:yeah, I mean, I think you guys can talk more about this because I limited myself to one venue. I didn't walk around like you were all over. Different venues, but
Leonard Lee:yeah, but I was looking at other stuff. Yeah, I was looking at other stuff too. So, yeah, but, yeah,
Prakash Sangam:yeah, so I didn't go to a lot of the a. I. P. C. folks as such. I think AMD was the only one with new, new announcements and so on. Right. All others, they don't make, it's more of a show and tell rather than new product announcements as such. Right.
yeah.
Prakash Sangam:I mean, everybody had that on their display as one of their components. I didn't see anything really, really new about the IPCs at CS. Of course, AI was everywhere. Yeah, that's a very high level.
Anurag Agrawal:Let me say, so Lenovo's pain book. Yeah, well, the game changer, right? Because that thing book, they've evolved their line for the last several years and the new one with, when you put your palm against it, it recognizes and the screen extends. Yeah. I think that was absolutely fantastic.
Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:some of the other things that they have done is I think, AI sound studio or something like that, they call it with. It was a concept PC where you are speaking, you are in a conference call, moving around the speaker or the screen kind of moves along with you. Yeah, that is very interesting. And above all, I think AMD made some really good announcements at, regarding AI CPUs. And along with that, HP was there and Dell was there. Both of them had made some announcements along with the MD on the same stage, which is actually was pretty, pretty. Yeah, and impressive.
Leonard Lee:Yeah. Yeah, that was the, geez, let me see if I can get this right. It was the rise in 300 pro. And, Sam bird getting up on stage and announcing that, Dell is going to be partnering with MD to now bring their chips into, enterprise. I think that was like one of the big news items. here's the other thing that I thought was, an inevitable thing. I think now you're starting to see the AI PC concept move toward desktop, right? So, non portable. With the, advent or introduction of arrow lake, obviously have a lunar lake and tell kind of teased, Panther Lake, but I think it's really this. Move up the, PC category, toward workstation, this definition of AI PC that, I thought was kind of interesting. And the other thing is what NVIDIA is doing, right? I mean, they introduced digits. that's like literally a Blackwell, super computing server in a tiny little box, you see them bringing their own definition of what a AIPC is, which is GPU centric. And then, we're seeing this kind of like meeting of the 2 minds and so AIPC, I think is this year is going to be a really confusing thing. So for so long, it's been about NPU, NPU, NPU. It's all about NPU. And now, especially AMD is in a weird spot because they're in the GPU game as well, right? I thought I saw that. That was like a big, one of the big things for me. Coming out of CES
Prakash Sangam:and it also, I mean, basically it started at a premium laptop, high performance laptop level, going up to the desktop and there are also rumors slash news about, NVIDIA and, Media tech coming out, right? And it's also going down, another point about enterprise one full portfolio of, offerings, right? Yeah. From a 600 and 700 PC to a premium PC. So, there are a lot of, call common nouns, this basically series. And then, yeah, and I, snapchat X, right? It's serious. Yeah. X it does. It's elite X plus. Now it's just X. Yeah.
Leonard Lee:The 600 and below.
Prakash Sangam:And also, the Leno, I had a few very interesting, demonstrations, of course The extended rollable display was very interesting, very usable. I think we've talked about quite a lot on the podcast. And then they had an interesting mouse, if you see, which was good. And then the enterprise, audio, system, I mean, it's still POC, that was interesting as well. going back to main point, AIPCs, so I don't think there will be a non AIPC very soon, in my view, right? So, we use it for AI or not, basically, PCs are becoming AIPCs, in my view. I agree. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Every PC will be replaced by AIPC. Is it for AI or not?
Leonard Lee:Well, maybe that's why there is, this anticipated super cycle may not actually happen. It's exactly what you're saying. It looks like anyone who's going to be buying a new PC is likely going to be buying a new AI PC. It's not a creative. Right. It's just, it's a substitute, right? So yeah, it's displacing, it's placing non AIPC. It's kind of, I
Prakash Sangam:think, acceleration. You now got more reasons to upgrade. It's not only because, 10 is end of life. Windows 10, you have to get 11 And then if you're looking to upgrade. Why would you buy a non AI PC, right? So it's kind of that's I think,
Anurag Agrawal:I think, it goes back to your point about personas, right? For example, if there is a back end user,
right,
Anurag Agrawal:then you say, you know what, why should I spend or even if the pricing is same, am I buying one feature too many?
You
Anurag Agrawal:know, through, with, within A IPC, right? Mm-hmm. If it's a, client, front facing, employee Yeah. And say May, maybe I should go in for that. And then within that, then you say, okay, what should I go with an intel? Or should I go with the Ryzen AI, you know, 300 series pro, processor, right. And then, I think, we talked about AMD as well. I don't think we should count out AMD because I think they're the announcement that they made. If I remember correctly, I think it was the Strix Halo up to 16 Zen 5 processors. Of course, right. Pretty solid plus PC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that they will run into this problem about, you know, is Intel versus AMD, which one should I go with?
Leonard Lee:their client division did pretty well this past quarter. looks like, they're making some serious traction with their S. O. C. So, hey, let's talk about the devices that we've been tinkering around with because it's 1 of the things that I think, would be interesting for audiences. We have all these A. I. P. C. I know that there's some that we share in common that we've been testing out. So, Yeah. Well, what are your impressions? why don't we start off with, the la probably the la one of the latest ones that we received, which is the lunar lake or, or the, uh, R edition, Lenovo, X one Carbon Chen 13. Did I get it right? You got it right. The answer point Wow. Okay. Um, yeah, I've been using it. And, first impression is it's just incredibly light straight out of the box. It was like a feather.
Prakash Sangam:Maya, if you're an IT guy listening to this, you want to make your CEO, CFO, CTO happy. Just give this PC to him.
Leonard Lee:Make sure it's haptic,
Prakash Sangam:haptic
Leonard Lee:trackpad version,
Prakash Sangam:I mean, it's incredibly light. Pretty fast. I've been really impressed with its use. I think I use Unison. I'm a power user of a PC and a phone, interaction. Unison works fine, works most of the time. I feel it's still a little slow and there is some room to, to improve there. the piece is really, really good.
Anurag Agrawal:is. It is absolutely good. I mean, see, think pads have always been very light.
Yeah,
Anurag Agrawal:The previous gen think pad x1 was all the carbon was also pretty light. There are things think pad x1 nano was also very light. So it has been extremely light, right? But I think in this case, within a very thin form factor, they've been able to fit in an HDMI port. They've got this USB C ports and everything like that. I think it's a no brainer to use that. And the keyboard layout is absolutely unbelievably good. I still don't use that. The track point, it's still there. It is impressive.
Prakash Sangam:Actually, believe it or not, I thought they kept it just for, branding sake, it's kind of defines the identity of thing, right? I actually talked to somebody who said that he loves it. He uses it. the track point, it has very different names. So everybody has their favorite name.
Yeah.
Prakash Sangam:Well,
you
Leonard Lee:know, When I, when I used to use think pads all the time for work when I was at IBM, I used the track point all the time because number one, I didn't like carrying, a, mouse around. just because I thought it's like, well, why do I need to carry something else to interface with my computer? but the problem was, the trackpad was not that good. Right. One of the things I was hoping is, with the model that Lenovo sent me, I get the haptic feedback version because, you know, I use max. Look, Mac books have amazing track pads, right? I don't use mouses or mice or whatever you call them. I'm a big track pad person. And so, I think having a good track pad experience is very important because. If you don't have a great experience, you do have to resort to a mouse. They're like all these dead spots, on non haptic feedback track pads and that really gets in the way of your productivity. But definitely one of the big pluses, and I know some of these improvements are incremental, right? But that keyboard it's inspiring. It actually me. Be productive and, I have to be very subjective here. It's better than, the MacBook keyboard. And, I oftentimes, like, when I'm doing heavy, writing. I use the think pad because the keyboard is just so easy to use. And so I, they've always done a great job with the keyboard. It's a huge forte for them, even versus other brands.
Anurag Agrawal:It is absolutely great. I think that they call it the tabletop go or something like that.
Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:But another feature I found, I find very. Useful within this, laptop is the 65 watt rapid charging, it charges up to 80 percent within an hour,
which is
Anurag Agrawal:absolutely unbelievably great,
right?
Anurag Agrawal:with the 80 percent charge, I think I can get, half a day to full day of work, but only downside is. I think they need to upgrade the camera, the webcam, right? Mm, I think it is, it is not even five MP right now. I think they kind of, they should do that.
Mm hmm.
Leonard Lee:So you would rather have, AI make us look 10 years younger. Is that is
Anurag Agrawal:Absolutely. And I I, I think, I think they have, I think they have it, they call it the AI camera or maybe they have it. in the other one, which is the ping pad, 14 s gen six, I think they have this AI camera. Yeah,
Prakash Sangam:I'm assuming you guys use the slim, seven X as well. Yoga.
Leonard Lee:Much heavier.
Prakash Sangam:Much, much heavier. And the display of that is a little bit brighter than this. It's much heavier. Battery life. I think, both were similar. For me, you get one full working day of battery life. More than that, I think most of the time you don't need, Multi day battery life, you play at home, but at the end of the day, you always come back. Your home or hotel, if you're traveling and you're fortunate and you obviously would be working in the night and you can charge. So both of them are similar. I actually, you know, used the, Samsung, Galaxy Book 4 edge as well, which is, X elite based, laptop. It's a 16 inch and pretty light, not as light as carbon, of course, because it's bigger. I really love, the, um, the, Carbon X1, keyboard.
Yeah.
Prakash Sangam:It's very satisfying when you click, you know that you get it right. it's a different keyboard, thin keyboard that Edge has. I like that too. I'm kind of torn between which is the two different kinds, two different experience. I'm torn between which I like most. So both of them, right. And then that, and this keyboard is not that noisy. The edge one is a little bit noisy, especially the speed, the shift key. And then,, for a 16 inch, it's pretty thin and light too, so, going back to the point, these were all sold as Copilot Plus PCs with huge NPU, but I think what we are talking about and what people are liking. Or not liking are basically nothing related to ai. Right. They're Yeah. Good pc. Yeah, true. Absolutely true. That life and other things, right? So yeah, and that's what highlighting,
Leonard Lee:and I think that's gonna be a struggle for a lot of the OEMs.'cause so many of'em are looking at, developing and at their. Sort of branded AI experiences, how do you differentiate with AI? I mean, 1 thing that is quite evident is that the whole copilot plus piece PC, launch. Didn't have the impact I think a lot of and and consumers and enterprises were expecting, and so I think, they didn't get a boost from that. And so now everyone. Is in a race to figure out how do we surface a value story around, on device AI, because, you know, most of these things are cloud bound, right? they're being served from the cloud. So, that's going to be a challenge in terms of substantiating the identity of AI PC beyond the MPU, but definitely, I mean, you mentioned the battery life, that I think everyone's Done a great job of Annie and, you know, really, getting very close to, if not exceeding the Mac book experiences, right? The longevity that there has been the trademark for the Max, I can't say that the X Series is the only game in town when it comes to that, battery life, I mean even the standby power, all day for on the lunar lake or the Aura Edition, X one carbon. Very, very good and very comfortable to the yoga.
Anurag Agrawal:Right. I mean, even Snapdragon, which I've been using a lot, has been absolutely fantastic.
know,
Anurag Agrawal:yes, it's a smaller form factor, but the point here is that they managed to make it light. Because Dell PCs are generally pretty heavy, but they have managed to make it light. The same level of battery life, the screen is bright, so it is absolutely good. Right. But, I must bring up a point. I would have thought by this time, dell's AI Studio or Lenovo's AI Now or HP's AI Companion would have been further along in the revolution, right? Because many of these are meant to run locally, take advantage of this AI capability of the PC. So I've not seen that, right? I did not see that. Yes, there were some strange examples at the CES. But I've not seen them really evolve, right? like Lenovo AI now is built on this metal llama, right? It's a local language model and HP is AI companion. They say that, you know what, it can help. The user discover and analyze, perform and these kind of things, but I really want to see that evolve and make it very practical for the user.
Leonard Lee:Yeah, well, maybe it's going to be that whole agentic thing that everyone's pushing now. So we'll see how all of that shapes up. I think that will come with some challenges.
Prakash Sangam:Yeah, I mean, there is actually a good scope now, to make, And then you call agentic or not made more personalization, more interactive. For example, even searching for settings, you could make it much more easier with the eye. Right. For example, like display settings, right? They have now some of it, but it could be much more. And some of these examples of UI and they're trying to do, you can create an image on the device and others. I don't know how much utility they have in enterprise space because, creating a nice sketch. Okay. Yeah, so
Leonard Lee:I kind of use those tools. apple intelligence, they have the image playground also in copilot. I, I, yeah. Very occasionally, but let's put it this way. I wouldn't pay for any of this stuff.
Prakash Sangam:Good, good. No
Leonard Lee:problem. I would not pay for this. It's like, you know what? Okay, nice, nice new feature for the software upgrade. But, come on. I'm not going to pay for this. I'm sorry, we don't sugarcoat stuff, so you guys want to do it. Yeah.
Prakash Sangam:So what I think of the opportunity that we have is, the cloud is becoming siloed, right? You have Microsoft silo, Google silo, meta silo, and other things. And obviously. If you're on one, you cannot interact with the applications in the other realm. Maybe since OEMs are, they are working with Google and on the Chrome, for example, they can work with Gemini and they're like, Lama model on their laptop. And, obviously with Microsoft, all of the copilot plus, things, maybe they should come up with a middle layer. Call it agentic or not, which kind of, abstracts the things from, for the user, puts the models behind and come up with use cases and users, which simplifies the complexity and makes it useful for the user. a simple example is, Microsoft office, applications. And then I have Gmail and I might be using Google Calendar, for example, or Chrome and so on. Somehow you have a homogeneous user experience or something like that, that Interworking or something.
Anurag Agrawal:Yeah. Yeah. So, so you're right. So I think that's what we call is the interwork platform, right? Yeah, because ultimately I would like this file explorer to kind of go away completely, right? Because every time you have to find a file, you start to search for it. I would know because the PC knows me, right? They should know me a lot more. They know at what angle I keep my pc, at what point I get up and close the lid and things like that. Yeah, he should exactly know depending upon the context. Hey, I have a podcast recording with Leonard and Prakash, and we are going to talk about A IPC. It should present to me the AI data that we have from the research. Automatically up on the screen. That's what I am waiting for. Now, whether that's based on agentic AI, or it is something else, I think that's where you say, you know what, the PC should know me exactly inside and out. Everything should be interconnected. Not only know my calendar, but what problem I'm trying to solve. I think that's where the AI PC will become really useful.
Prakash Sangam:Yeah, if you use recall famous or infamous use, if we are coming for this, this discussion on AI, maybe it gives a snapshot and a summary of all the things the recall has seen. Related to AI PCs from myself from others, maybe summarize this as bullet points for us to refer, right? For example, something like
Anurag Agrawal:I think, but that is done by zoom itself, right? There is a summary meetings here are the action items for
Prakash Sangam:zoom, right? I'm saying everything that I've done with my PC. Be it Chrome, be it Edge, be it Microsoft applications, right? So, across the board, everything is, what Zoom can do is for only that meeting. If I'm meeting on Teams, for example, this is the same thing as Zoom cannot do it, right? So, I think OEMs with this, with the device, they are seeing all that on the screen, right? I don't know whether they will have access to all of that, but if they can break the silos, combine the information from different silos and present as a homogeneous experience to the user. That's where it is true. And I think that's
Anurag Agrawal:the promise of the connected business or the connected user. When you look at the connected workspace and connected cloud applications, connected collaboration, security and everything, and they all have to be interconnected one way or the other. And probably agentic AI can do it if you run it, and maybe they can do it locally. And that's where this orchestration piece will come into the picture, and PCOMs will have to think through it and say, you know what, how can I enable this for the user? That some pieces can be run in the cloud and some pieces can be run locally.
Yeah.
Anurag Agrawal:Anyway, we are just kind of thinking through this.
Leonard Lee:Well, yeah, you know what? Everyone out there, if you're looking for a Gentic AI, UI engineers, okay, and innovators, These two guys right here, just give them a call. Wow. You know what? We can go on forever quite literally, but I have to tell you, gentlemen, I'm getting hungry, We went a bit long with our first episode here, but this is really great. This is really fun. I think it should be very informative to the audience if they, have more than a 15 second attention span. So we do this here, to share and, help you understand the market better. Help you understand the technology and industry better how they intersect and create new opportunities not only for, OEMs that are bringing these wonderful devices to enterprises and consumers, but, how these. Devices and the technology can, enrich lives of consumers and also work in productivity enterprises, and of course, SMBs, right? So, with that, gentlemen, thank you so much. And to our audience, thank you so much for joining us and listening to us this. Far and, just wanted to give both of you an opportunity to share with our audience how they can get in touch with you and tap into your research.
Anurag Agrawal:Wonderful. Yes, absolutely. Just go to dot com. See all the wonderful research that we published and read all the insights as blogs that we published there. If you want to reach out and inquiry at dot com.
Leonard Lee:Yeah, absolutely. Prakash.
Prakash Sangam:Yeah, same here. All that here. All that information on that website here. All of my research and the inside there as well. And, so on, linkedin quite active and twitter. My twitter handle is my tech musings. Yeah, yeah,
Leonard Lee:he actually met X. Okay. Hey everyone, again, thank you so much. please subscribe to our podcast it'll be featured on the next curve YouTube channel It'll be available in audio version on buzzsprout. You can listen to us on your favorite podcast platform. take us on your jog, on your drive and, also subscribe to the next curve research portal at www dot next dash curve. com for the tech and industry insights that matter in the world of consumer and commercial, Tech we'll see you next time. Take care of gentlemen. Goodbye.
