Buyers Are Trading Up: 80% More Likely to Buy AI PCs as Traditional PCs Stall at 47%

Austin, Texas, USA, June 23, 2026

Futurum releases its 1H 2026 Intelligent Devices Global Enterprise Decision-Maker Survey of 818 IT leaders worldwide, highlighting shifting trends in AI PC purchase intent.

The “1H 2026 AI Devices Global Enterprise Decision Maker Survey Report”, a survey of 818 global enterprise IT decision makers fielded in Q2 2026, finds enterprise buyers trading up: 80.4% are more likely to purchase AI PCs for their organizations than they were six months ago, versus 47.1% for traditional PCs. The downside gap is wider still: 19.7% of decision makers are now less likely to buy traditional PCs, against just 1.8% for AI PCs, putting net purchase intent at +78.6 for AI PCs versus +27.4 for traditional PCs. All ten AI PC categories tracked outrank workstations, tablets, and traditional PCs.

Figure 1: Buyers are Trading Up: AI PCs Surge, Traditional PCs Stall

Olivier Blanchard, Research Director & Practice Lead, Intelligent Devices at The Futurum Group, said: “Buyers aren’t just buying into AI-capable PCs; they are clearly moving on from traditional PCs. Four in five decision makers leaning into AI PCs is the strongest signal yet that the refresh cycle has picked a winner. It’s important to understand that this is a trade-up, not a spending spree: budgets are normalizing even as intent concentrates. The best way to frame this new competitive dynamic is that every legacy device in a PC fleet is now competing with an AI PC for the same dollar.”

The 1H 2026 survey reveals several structural shifts in enterprise device strategy:

• Budgets back the trade-up, pragmatically. Organizations expect AI PC spending to grow by a mean of 18.8% in 2026, with 83.9% planning double-digit increases and fewer than 7% planning any cut, even as feature excitement cools 10-15 points versus 2H 2025. Buyers are funding deployment, not hype: 90% still view AI PCs as the next evolution of enterprise computing.
• The processor race is wide open, and Apple is the quiet share-gainer. Intel preference fell to 39% from 43% in 2H 2025, while Apple climbed to 23% from 18%. At the same time, buyer confusion over TOPS ratings and chip architectures rose roughly 4 points, making silicon clarity a real procurement friction.
• The AI PC is a wedge into a broader intelligent device estate. Majorities of organizations are also evaluating AI-capable robotics (56%), smart cameras (52%), smartphones (51%), and smart displays (50%), pulling adjacent device categories into the same refresh conversations.
• NVIDIA could enter the PC market with a two-thirds mandate, sight unseen. If NVIDIA shipped an Arm-based Windows PC processor this year, 66.6% of decision makers say they would consider adding NVIDIA-powered PCs to their fleet. Asked what those systems would replace, Intel is the most exposed (31.4%), ahead of AMD (24.4%), Qualcomm (20.0%), and Apple (11.6%).

Figure 2: An NVIDIA Windows PC Has a Two-Thirds Mandate, Sight Unseen

Subscribers can read more in the full report, “1H 2026 AI Devices Global Enterprise Decision Maker Survey Report“, on the Futurum Intelligence Platform. Non-subscribers click here for more information.

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