Dell Technologies revamps PC portfolio

The revamp of Dell’s PC line up also comes at a time whereby companies around the world will be looking to upgrade their devices as Microsoft ends support for Windows 10 in October.

At CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Dell Technologies unveiled its revamped PC line up as the vendor looks to continue its dominance as the top provider for AI PCs globally. The revamp appears to be an overhaul of its current PC product lineup into three tracks, Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max.

In a media statement, Dell said the categories are focused on PCs that are designed for specific users. The Dell track is designed for play, school and work while Dell Pro is designed for professional-grade productivity. The Dell Pro Max will focus more on providing users with maximum performance.

“The PC is the most important personal productivity device of our lifetime, and it is being transformed by AI. Dell has driven PC innovation for the last 40 years and we are well positioned for this moment. Our new, streamlined portfolio of AI PCs is here to deliver the future of computing,” said Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies.

The revamp of Dell’s PC line up also comes at a time whereby companies around the world will be looking to upgrade their employee devices as Microsoft looks to end support for Windows 10.

In Asia Pacific, organizations are already replacing and updating their older PCs to support the changes. However, given the increased use of AI in organizations, more companies are also opting to use AI PCs as they look to upgrade and replace their current models.

According to Manish Gupta, Vice President for Global Alliance and Partner Ecosystem in Asia Pacific, Japan and China for Dell Technologies, there is definitely going to be an increase in PC sales in 2025. He also believes that Dell is very well positioned to cope with the demand for AI PCs in the region.

“We have got a complete portfolio of AI PCs. They are defined by the number of NPUs that are there in the PCs and the number of TOPS that they can provide. In fact, the demand now on AI PCs is growing at a much faster pace as compared to the traditional PCs, especially with the refresh cycle that's coming in for Windows 11 because Windows 10 goes out of life in October,” said Gupta.

Gupta also pointed out that there are currently about 240 million PCs that are not able to run Windows 11 globally. As customers are refreshing these devices, they are also realizing the amount of productivity gains they can get out of AI PCs instead of just going with traditional PCs is significant.

“This is spurring a significant demand on AI PCs and with the portfolio Dell has, it's going to be a pillar of growth for us in the PC space. This in turn will also be reflected in overall growth for organizations as well. Apart from AI PCs, there is also demand for AI servers and associated networking and storage,” added Gupta.

Increased demand for AI PCs

As Gupta explained, there are two main drivers for the growth in AI PCs. The first is on Microsoft ending support for Windows 10. The second is on the increased need to have AI PCs to run AI workloads, especially with more organizations expected to implement more AI use cases in 2025.

“Customers are looking at the most impactful AI use cases. These use cases would straddle across sales, content generation, software development, and supply chain. The are the large buckets around which GenAI use cases will emerge or are emerging,” said Gupta.

At the same time, Gupta also pointed out that with IDC predicting GenAI investments to reach US$110 billion by 2028, the verticals that are accelerating this demand include retail, banking and the financial sector.

“If you look at consumption, the biggest consumption for GenAI today is really on the software development side and it spans across industries. There are governments, telco, logistics and others. These are very specific use cases. For example, in retail, the focus will be on using GenAI for assisted sales, which can be agentic in nature. And this is where the entire gamut of how GenAI will come into being in 2025,” explained Gupta.

Gupta added that it is also an area where Dell will be super focused on in 2025. With the Dell AI Factory, Gupta mentioned that Dell is working with a multitude of ISVs, like NVIDIA for example, to help make some of these use cases a reality in the market. With the AI Factory, Gupta also said that businesses need other components for the infrastructure, such as the hybrid cloud.

“Think about it this way - we very often do not marry AI to PCs. While we have all heard about AI PCs, but the reality is by the end of the decade, 90% of workloads would really be inferencing. And a lot of the inferencing is going to be disaggregated. So, what we are bringing as a part of AI Factory is not just the data center part of it. We are bringing AI PCs from workstations to compute. You've got to have the overlying software architectures which will finally lean into the use cases. So, the hardware business for Dell is still going to go strong with all the AI demand coming in,” said Gupta.