Entries by Ben Carbonneau, Senior Data Analyst

Lenovo Aims to Become a Global Solutions Provider through Strategic Partnerships and AI-driven Innovation

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While Lenovo’s portfolio and go-to-market strategy may differ slightly by geography, the company’s pocket-to-cloud and One Lenovo initiatives remain the same around the world and are the basis for the company’s differentiation in the market — a theme during every session of the conference. From smartphones to servers, Lenovo is vying for share in every segment, and by investing in the unification and openness of its portfolio, whether it be through the development of homegrown software or new ecosystem partnerships, the company is positioning to grow in the AI era. Changing its perception from a PC powerhouse to a solution provider remains one of Lenovo’s largest challenges, but the company’s work in sponsoring and supporting FIFA and F1 with its full-stack technology capabilities demonstrates its willingness to invest in overcoming this hurdle.

AMD Lays Out its Road Map to Erode NVIDIA’s Dominance in the AI Data Center

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AMD’s Advancing AI 2025 event served as a testament, reaffirming the company’s open-ecosystem-driven and cost-competitive AI strategy while also highlighting how far the company’s AI hardware portfolio has come over the last few years. However, while AMD’s commitment to an open software ecosystem and open industry standards is a strong differentiator for the company, it is also a major risk as it makes AMD’s success dependent on the performance of partners and consortium members.

Hardware-centric Vendors Continue to Make Their Move Into Software

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Though revenue mixes are increasingly shifting in favor of software, driven in part by acquisitions (e.g., Cisco’s purchase of Splunk), hardware continues to dominate the market, accounting for 80% of benchmarked vendor revenue in 3Q24. Industry-standard servers being sold to cloud and GPU “as a Service” providers are overwhelmingly fueling market growth, more than offsetting unfavorable cyclical demand weakness in the storage and networking markets.

AI Agents: What Are They, and How Will They Impact the AI PC Space in 2025?

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Over the past several quarters, OEMs have focused on incorporating local AI-powered features into their new PC releases, with initial neural processing unit (NPU)-enabled use cases leveraging AI to further enhance collaboration experiences and extend battery life. However, AI agents take the NPU’s functionality a step further, combining the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) with other resources to partially or fully automate a wide range of tasks, including responding to emails, booking hotel stays, or opening and closing IT help desk tickets.

AI Buzz Sparks IT Infrastructure Shifts, but Privacy and Strategic Challenges Are Impacting Adoption

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The industry enthusiasm surrounding AI has quickly led to shifts in organizations’ strategic priorities and expected investments such as demand for servers. Despite the hype, few organizations have operationalized GenAI to date. Instead, most are focused on overcoming initial barriers to adoption, including understanding the business implications of this new technology frontier.

AI PCs: Progress, Potential and Hurdles in Redefining the Market in 2025

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When OEMs first started releasing AI PCs, they shared expectations that the advent of this new product category would help drive the next major PC refresh cycle. However, even as vendors continue to roll out new generations of AI PCs containing increasingly powerful NPUs, adoption remains relatively slow. To build out the market and drive greater adoption of AI PCs over the next few years, silicon providers, PC OEMs and ISVs will need to collaborate around and invest in developing applications that increase the functionality of these devices beyond what can be achieved by a traditional, non-AI PC.