Global shipments of PCs have been declining for the past two years following a pandemic-era splurge by consumers and businesses. Lower end-market demand coupled with excessive inventory levels across the PC supply chain has been wreaking havoc on the PC chip businesses of both Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices.

There now appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. Gartner expects PC shipments to return to growth in the fourth quarter, and Canalys is calling for 5% growth in the fourth quarter and 8% growth in 2024. These forecasts hinge on an improving macroeconomic environment and an upgrade cycle driven by artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled laptops.

Canalys expects 19% of PCs shipped next year to be AI-capable, which would include Apple's M-series Macs and systems built around Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake processors. Meteor Lake chips will feature dedicated AI hardware, enabling some AI tasks to run without requiring a cloud-based service and without bogging down the central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU).

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Source Fool.com