Dell: "Consumers don't buy because of AI"
Dell surprisingly goes against the grain: AI is not a major topic for notebooks. Customers are not buying because of it.
(Image: Dell)
At the CES 2026 tech trade show, artificial intelligence (AI) was, as so often, the number one topic. Among the major PC manufacturers, only Dell went against the trend, and quite publicly so.
Product Manager Kevin Terwilliger said during an event with journalists, which heise online also attended: "We are very focused on leveraging the AI capabilities of a device. In fact, every product we announce has an AI unit. But what we've learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is that they don't buy because of AI."
The 180-degree turn from a year earlier was therefore no coincidence. At CES 2025, Dell also still emphasized AI. The manufacturer has also backtracked on its naming conventions since then. Among other things, the brand name XPS is returning.
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Long battery life is more appealing
From other manufacturers, you hear similar things about AI and device sales: Powerful AI units (Neural Processing Units, NPUs) don't drive demand particularly high.
This is indirectly evident at processor supplier Qualcomm. As early as summer 2024, the company reportedly found, according to Bloomberg, that it was primarily the long battery life of notebooks with their Snapdragon X CPUs that attracted interest. This was despite Snapdragon devices being the first to support Microsoft's Copilot functions. Qualcomm ultimately also emphasized battery life when introducing the new generation Snapdragon X2.
Microsoft is now integrating Copilot into almost all of its own services. This includes, for example, Studio Effects, which can blur the background in video conferences, among other things. Videos can be subtitled on demand. Paint can generate images with varying degrees of success.
heise medien is an official media partner of CES 2026.
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