Evaluation of PC sales powered by Snapdragon X still below one million units despite growing AI PC market surge.

Canalys, a market research company, has released a report on the sales situation of “AI PCs” (including PCs with NPU chips). The definition of AI PCs by Canalys is broad as it includes Macs and Chromebooks (anything with NPU chips). Overall, the market overview shows sales of 13.3 million units in Q3/2024, with Windows PCs holding a 53% market share and Macs holding 47%.

Interesting numbers provided by Canalys to TechRadar reveal that if we only count PCs using Snapdragon X chips, sales are at 720,000 units in Q3/2024, accounting for only 0.8% of total PC sales in the quarter and 1.5% of Windows PC sales. This means that within the AI PC group with NPU chips, the majority of sales still come from x86 chips like AMD Ryzen AI 300 and Intel Lunar Lake.

The leading PC brand in the Snapdragon X market share is Microsoft Surface, which is not surprising as Microsoft pushes Copilot+ PC. Dell follows closely in second place with a strong focus on promoting Snapdragon as well.

TLDR: Canalys’ report on AI PC sales shows Windows PCs dominating the market, with Snapdragon X chip PCs accounting for a small percentage, led by Microsoft Surface and Dell in market share.