Tuesday, July 9th 2024
Battery Life is Driving Sales of Qualcomm Snapdragon Copilot+ PCs, Not AI
The recent launch of Copilot+ PCs, a collaboration between Microsoft and Qualcomm, has taken an unexpected turn in the market. While these devices were promoted for their artificial intelligence capabilities, a Bloomberg report reveals that consumers are primarily drawn to them for their impressive battery life. The Snapdragon X-powered Copilot+ PCs have made a significant impact, securing 20% of global PC sales during their launch week. However, industry analyst Avi Greengart points out that the extended battery life, not the AI features, is driving these sales. Microsoft introduced three AI-powered features exclusive to these PCs: Cocreator, Windows Studio Effects, and Live Captions with Translation. Despite these innovations, many users find these features non-essential for daily use. The delay of the anticipated Recall feature due to privacy concerns has further dampened enthusiasm for the AI aspects of these devices.
The slow reception of on-device AI capabilities extends beyond consumer preferences to the software industry. Major companies like Adobe, Salesforce, and SentinelOne declined Microsoft's request to optimize their apps for the new hardware, citing resource constraints and the limited market share of AI-capable PCs. Gregor Steward, SentinelOne's VP for AI, suggests it could take years before AI PCs are widespread enough to justify app optimization. Analysts project that by 2028, only 40% of new computers will be AI-capable. Despite these challenges, Qualcomm remains optimistic about the future of AI PCs. While the concept may currently be more on the marketing side, the introduction of Arm-based Windows laptops offers a welcome alternative to the Intel-AMD duopoly. As the technology evolves and adoption increases, on-device AI features may become more prevalent and useful. The imminent arrival of AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel Lunar Lake chips promises to expand the Copilot+ PC space further. For now, however, it appears that superior battery life remains the primary selling point for consumers.
Source:
Bloomberg
The slow reception of on-device AI capabilities extends beyond consumer preferences to the software industry. Major companies like Adobe, Salesforce, and SentinelOne declined Microsoft's request to optimize their apps for the new hardware, citing resource constraints and the limited market share of AI-capable PCs. Gregor Steward, SentinelOne's VP for AI, suggests it could take years before AI PCs are widespread enough to justify app optimization. Analysts project that by 2028, only 40% of new computers will be AI-capable. Despite these challenges, Qualcomm remains optimistic about the future of AI PCs. While the concept may currently be more on the marketing side, the introduction of Arm-based Windows laptops offers a welcome alternative to the Intel-AMD duopoly. As the technology evolves and adoption increases, on-device AI features may become more prevalent and useful. The imminent arrival of AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel Lunar Lake chips promises to expand the Copilot+ PC space further. For now, however, it appears that superior battery life remains the primary selling point for consumers.
33 Comments on Battery Life is Driving Sales of Qualcomm Snapdragon Copilot+ PCs, Not AI
Surprised no one from the "reputed" press has even bothered doing that, or maybe they don't know which windows services are safe to disable :shadedshu:
Thankfully for my use case I haven't run into any app compatibility issues, but it's definitely something that needs to be addressed if these devices are to be truly successful.
I'm want to maintain compatibility with all x86-64 software, 3rd party Nvidia/AMD GPUs, custom builds, gaming, etc. But damn, reduce TDP without having to go to ARM.
I really want something I can make music in bitwig studio for 8 or more hours with heavy tracks!!! the best I cna do on any of my current ones is 3 hours if that...
best battery life i've had is on my latitude 5400 and I've gone 7 hours with a mix of music, web browsing, youtube, discord, and file management. and the battery is at 86% health
This inspiron that I'm typing this on is about 3-6 w mostly web and half hour of music production. for music production about 2-3 hours, but it has a 120Hz display so that cuts into battery life. battery health: 96%
People who paraded around the M1 laptops as some miracle for battery life were probably doing so after having used miserable, outdated laptops.
Modern x86 laptops aren't that far behind. Benchmarks I was looking at were like 20% difference between AMD systems and Qualcomm ones. But, maybe that increases as ARM support improves and emulation use decreases.
Overall though, as an owner of modern AMD systems and an M1 system, I notice:
1) They're all quite good for battery life
2) But it's harder to get the AMD systems into the ideal state, which I believe is because Windows is a menace for idling.
3) Plugging in any peripheral can basically cut the battery life in half, because modern CPUs are THAT efficient, that USB power draw becomes noticeable.
4) When your CPU is efficient enough, the rest of the system efficiency matters. Horribly inefficient monitor? Network cards that can't idle? Yeah, your battery will be bad. Not x86's fault! Buy higher quality laptops.Speak for yourself. Works fine here. But yes there are exceptions, like one time I upgraded vmware and it decided it then wanted to use the discrete GPU instead of the embedded. Simply put discrete GPUs = more trouble. That doesnt make ARM any better, because theoretically they could have discrete GPUs too if desired.