Is AI in PCs a gimmick? Are PC makers worried of tablets and foldables? Asus India consumer PC chief answers

The country’s PC market including desktops, workstations and notebooks grew just 3% year-on-year, with 3.5 million units shipped, in the April–June quarter of 2025, according to International Data Corporation. To put this in context, smartphone shipments of the country grew at a much higher 7.3% year-on-year reaching 37 million in the same period.

While the commercial PC segment helped maintain this flattish growth for the overall market, the consumer segment slipped 3.9% during this period.

As a result, at a time when the country’s consumer PC segment seems to be facing tough times, Fortune India's Vidhi Taparia spoke to Arnold Su, vice president, consumer and gaming PC, system business group, ASUS India, on what plagues the consumer PC industry and are AI delays only weakening their case against more prepared AI smartphone makers.

Taparia: Do you agree personal computers (PCs) were late in joining the AI bandwagon?

Su: [The reason] people feel AI PCs came late has more to do with the definition (of these,) because that differs for all OEMs. Why people feel so, is also because Microsoft remains the dominant voice [for the PC market.] So, only when Microsoft finally said that AI PC is one that has 45 NPU TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second), did everyone call the start of AI era in PCs. If we base our definition on that, then yes, this is everything little bit late. That ways major PCs only came in May 2024. Yet, AI features that were made available initially in smartphones such as face recognition, were already available in PCs.

[For context: Microsoft, in March last year, had called the era of Copilot+ PCs or AI PCs as the norm, later going on to launching the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6]

Taparia: Do you agree AI in PCs will be as useful as smartphones equipped so seem to be?

Su: [No,] to be honest, the utility of an AI PC, at this moment, is not [that] much. For regular PC usage involving PowerPoint or Excel, AI is not 100% required. That's why when we talk about the demand creation for AI PCs, we don't see that regular user really come to us and not just us but, any of the PC brands.

For now, AI PC is more useful for professional or heavy users, and for those who want to pay and try something new.

It is more like the smartphone case study for regular end user. If you recollect 10-15 years ago, when you buy your first smartphone, what were you using your smartphone for – only call or SMS right? Then did you even require a smartphone? But you did not have a choice then given all the brands were only giving you a smartphone.

The same is going to happen today in the case of AI PCs, for all the PC brands will only offer you AI PC, no matter whether you need one or not. Plus, when you compare the AI PC with today’s non-AI PCs, you will think you are getting better performance, functionality at a better price.

But then when you come back to your first question, what is their utility? As a result, it will take some time like smartphones, all the application is not overnight. AI PCs will definitely [become common], but it will take 2-3 years.

Taparia: If for you, AI in PCs is currently a gimmick, what is Asus doing differently?

Su: We, as Asus, don't want to force the customer to only buy an AI PC. We have hence, segregated our AI PCs range into 3 segments. One is the everyday AI PC, which comes with only 10 NPU TOPS, next with 45 NPU TOPS, and the third one comes with advanced AI with NPU along with an NVIDIA GPU, leading the performance to go up to 320 TOPS. We don't want any user unnecessarily to agree to buying an AI PC. We want it to be a user choice

[For context: According to latest IDC data, AI notebook adoption has accelerated sharply, seeing a 145% year-on-year growth in the first half of 2025, even though only last year the technology was introduced and commercialised fully in second half of the year. The data reveals that basic AI notebooks drove this momentum, accounting for nearly 90% of AI shipments.]

Taparia: More smartphone OEMs are venturing into the foldables category, then there are newer tablets, like the OnePlus Pad 3, coming in the market. Do you anticipate that as a bigger competition than your PC players?

Su: We don't really consider (the former) as a competitor, but we do see that there is a potential risk. There also is an internal debate if we should enter the tablet market again. Still, neither will replace the other. For most users, the use-case scenarios vary hence they diversify the devices they own, possessing both a laptop and a mobile or a tablet.

Taparia: Why are we seeing a degrowth in the country’s consumer PC market? Is there any silver lining?

Su: India is a country with around 1 crore PC units of market and consumer is around 50 lakh. For consumer segment, the market pre-COVID until 2019 was much smaller, around 37 lakh units. During COVID, however, it went up to 47 lakh and continued to grow for two-three years until it peaked at 52 lakh units annually in 2022. But unfortunately, from 2023, the market started to decline and the first two months of this year too, a decline was registered. Yet from May we see a glimmer of hope as there is sequential and yearly growth in volumes.

One possibility for this might be the PC replacement cycle, because major purchases were from 2020-2022, so users may have required to buy new units only now after 5 years. Secondly, the PC penetration ratio was also increasing over the past few years. Till 2020, the PC penetration was stuck at 10%. Most of the buyers are second-time buyers, COVID however, has made people realise the need for PC despite an all-encompassing mobile phone.

Yet there is a segment that is growing even when overall market is declining. The first one is the gaming PC market. In 2022, when market touched 5.2 million units, gaming accounted for only 8 lakh units in India and in 2024, when market dropped to 4.6 million units, the gaming PC increased to 1.2 million. Meaning a share which was 15% in 2022, grew to 26% in 2024.

This is not just because of the rise of gamers in India but also because Youtubers or the content creators have needs that only a powerful gaming PC can fulfil.

For only a little more than half of the buyers, the primary usage of the machine is purely for gaming, the primary usage for the remaining buyers is they want a powerful piece, not just for gaming, but for everything. Thus, in the past few years we launched a Creator series for content creators.

Taparia: Having discussed industry issues, what is the distribution strategy of Asus in this struggling market?

Su: India is already the 3rd largest market for Asus. In a country with low PC penetration, my market is not just mainstream, premium customers from metros instead the Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns. India has around 6000 talukas.

We spend more effort to ensure that for [neglected] customers, when we open the store in a location where nobody is there, Asus is the only brand.

Additionally, for customers between 18 to 25 years old, the market share for Asus is the highest which means there are lots of customers who when they are in their young stage, their first PC is Asus.

Interestingly, the first-time buyer for these remote areas is capable enough to pay more to buy a better machine. So, our strategy is now to go omnichannel, everywhere where our customer is, from digital commerce to physical stores, be it independently or with dealers.

Taparia: What about local manufacturing with Padget Electronics [a Dixon Technologies’ subsidiary]?

Su: We started the local manufacturing in India from 2023. In 2025, we are increasing our manufacturing capacity. Considering Dixon also has the PLI scheme, we are working with them to see how we can leverage their overall capacity, and we will continue to work with them to further increase our capacities here. Yet, it is still in the initial stage.

In the PC industry, [however,] once more key component players come to India to set up factory, that is there is some localisation of the components, only then in our industry Make in India will really speed up.

Taparia: What targets has Asus set for the coming year and how does it plan to actualise them?

Su: We are currently the No. 2 brand [in consumer PC segment], meaning we have between 18-20% of market share. By 2026, we want to [become] No. 1, [for which, we] minimum [require] 25%-28% of share. Currently, we cover 600 districts, our goal is to reach 700-800 district by 2026, where either we should have a partner or our own stores. By 2028, we intend to enter every taluka.

In 2025, we have over 4,000-4,500 active dealers. Our aim is to reach at least 8,000-8,500 active dealers. When I increase my dealer channel to 8500 dealers. Just by selling one Asus laptop a month compared with today, that is additional 4000 units.

For context: As of Q2 FY 2025, HP holds the largest market share in India’s overall PC market at 30.8%, followed by Lenovo at 20.3%, and Acer at 14.8%. Asus is at the fifth position, despite a strong position in consumer segment portfolio, with an overall PC market share of 7.7%, according to IDC August data.