The future may lie in generative artificial intelligence, but while manufacturers are pushing hard to promote the new possibilities offered by this technology, customers are becoming more cautious—or even indifferent, which is certainly worse. First, on the hardware side. At Intel, consumers aren't rushing to buy PCs with Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake processors, the two most recent architectures with specialized AI chips.
AI without a "killer app"
Buyers are instead choosing machines with more affordable Raptor Lake chips—leading to an unexpected shortage of production capacity for chips made with "Intel 7" technology. This is surprising because the newer generations use newer processes from TSMC. The observation, made by Michelle Johnston Holthaus, CEO of the Intel Products division, is worrying for the group.
"What we are seeing is much stronger demand for our n-1 and n-2 products, in order to offer prices adapted to current consumer expectations," she explained during the company's recent quarterly results taken over by Tom's Hardware. The executive points out in particular the difficult economic context and the uncertainties linked to customs tariffs. The big black spot is the lack of consumer enthusiasm for "AI PCs," which are the future of the market for Intel and for the entire industry.
Aside from the price of PCs running these new chips, the other problem is that of "killer apps," or rather... their absence. The most interesting functions are integrated into already existing apps (productivity, messaging), and they are not more impressive than that. Not enough, in any case, to launch a wave of mass adoption.
Intel will obviously continue to promote its "AI PCs" with more attractive margins. But it will take a big effort in terms of features to make users want to buy such machines.
And for the moment at least, Microsoft is struggling to "re-enchant" generative AI! At the group's annual executive meeting, Amy Hood, the CFO, shared some unflattering data on Copilot. The bot, which the publisher has installed absolutely everywhere it was possible, did not exceed the glass ceiling of 20 million users per week last year. A drop in the ocean for ChatGPT, which at the same time had 400 million weekly users!
The figure, revealed by Newcomer, stops at the end of 2024. Hopefully for Microsoft's sake, it has increased since then, because other bots are not waiting. In recent weeks, Copilot has added a number of new features, such as vision capabilities.
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