PC's SoC future by 2032

[Adarna]

For the purpose of this discussion we will peg this as the static number of PCs shipped annually for the next 10 years.

For reference PC shipments improved to >275 million worldwide shipments in 2020.

This was before Apple left AMD/Intel with 22.5 million worldwide shipments of Macs for Apple Silicon in Nov 2020.

Leaving 252.5 million Intel/AMD PCs left.

I forecast Expect >80% of all x86 PCs becoming SoC by 2030s.

This would make >202 million PCs with SoC & less than <50.5 million PCs with non-SoCs.

Why? Because Apple's doing it and the PC industry will see it as the easier/cheaper/better/profitable way to make laptops/desktops for the mass market while improving performance per watt, power consumption, battery life & raw performance. This would reduce the complexities of PC's supply chain.

This will negatively impact users who prefer frictionless parts replacements as global units shipped will drop.

I can imagine new Nvida, AMD & Intel CPU & dGPU parts to be released further apart by a few more quarters to even years when volume drops to <20% or <50.5 million.

Nvidia, AMD & Intel SoC parts will increase in volume and may receive far more frequency in newer/faster/better SKUs.

Although AMD/Intel's market share may shrink even further when Windows 11 on ARM will finally address fat binaries & dynamic binary translation as well as those on the Mac.

I could imagine that Android SoC makers Mediatek, Qualcomm, HiSilicon (Huawei) and Samsung will want to expand into the Windows 11 on ARM PC space.

In terms of performance per watt they're between Apple silicon and x86.

Over 1 billion Android smartphones are shipped annually.

So them pursuing the quarter billion PC market would be easy for them to execute. Like Apple most of the R&D cost for PC SoC part has already been paid for by smartphone sales so a little bit more for a SKU specific to PCs wouldn't cost as much as for AMD/Intel.

Conservatively ARM SoC PCs may eat into 20% of 252.5 million PCs.

Leaving Intel/AMD with 202 million PCs for both SoC & non-SoC.

With such a smaller PC market >161.6 million of all x86 PCs will be SoC & <40.4 million of all x86 PCs will be non-SoC.

<40.4 million of the frictionless parts replacement PCs we enjoy today will really be something to chuckle about by 2032.

To keep cost down expect far fewer SKUs of CPUs & dGPUs to choose from.

 

[Ceed]

The advantage of the PC platform is the freedom of choice and the openness that comes from that, messy as that may be sometimes. While ARM and SoCs will dominate one segment of the market (and I hope they do, to give Apple Silicon some needed competition), another segment will continue on as they always have. In this, the people decide the direction of the platform, not one or several companies.

 

[MBAir2010]

PCs becoming SoC (System on a chip)
that means components include a central processing unit (CPU), memory, input/output ports and secondary storage, often alongside other components such as radio modems and a graphics processing unit (GPU) – all on a single substrate or microchip, rather than just a processor?

i just need to keep up with these computer abbreviations and terms
like "kets" which i have no idea (or care) what that measures.

thanks in advance!

 

[Adarna]

The advantage of the PC platform is the freedom of choice and the openness that comes from that, messy as that may be sometimes. While ARM and SoCs will dominate one segment of the market (and I hope they do, to give Apple Silicon some needed competition), another segment will continue on as they always have. In this, the people decide the direction of the platform, not one or several companies.

I agree with you about the frictionless parts replacement but given the advantages of cost and increased efficiencies would drive mass consumer market to prefer buying cheaper PCs with System on a Chip (SoC) than the "freedom of choice" we have now.

Typical mass consumer will keep their PC for 5-6 years then replace it entirely. Minority would bother to replace certain parts on their own years down the line. This is demonstrated today by how the mass market prefers laptops that are more difficult to upgrade parts over desktops.

By the 2030s I expect PCs with SoC to make up >80% of all PCs shipped while PCs with "freedom of choice" to be <20%.

This decrase of volume of units shipped globally will negatively impact users who prefer separate dGPU, CPU, memory, storage & logic board as their prices will go up and release cycles will take 2-3x longer than we are accustomed to right now.

PCs becoming SoC (System on a chip)
that means components include a central processing unit (CPU), memory, input/output ports and secondary storage, often alongside other components such as radio modems and a graphics processing unit (GPU) – all on a single substrate or microchip, rather than just a processor?

i just need to keep up with these computer abbreviations and terms
like "kets" which i have no idea (or care) what that measures.

thanks in advance!