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TrendForce’s latest research reveals that the current AI notebook market is primarily driven by Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm. However, as it stands, the industry still lacks products capable of fully demonstrating the value of on-device AI computing at scale and creating compelling upgrade incentives for consumers.
With NVIDIA officially unveiling its RTX Spark platform alongside the N1 and N1X processors at Computex, the AI notebook market is expected to evolve beyond today’s NPU-focused functionality demonstrations and enter a new phase centered on AI agents and on-device AI model computing.
TrendForce notes that the significance of the RTX Spark platform extends beyond adding another major player to the Windows on Arm ecosystem. It also marks the first expansion of the CUDA ecosystem into the Windows notebook market, which is expected to significantly accelerate AI notebook penetration. TrendForce forecasts AI laptop penetration to rise from 19.3% in 2025 to 37.5% in 2026 and then to 84.9% by 2029.
The N1/N1X processors, developed jointly by NVIDIA and MediaTek, are expected to play a key role in expanding the high-end AI notebook market. The platform integrates high-performance Arm-based CPUs, Blackwell architecture GPUs, and the CUDA ecosystem, while supporting up to 128 GB of unified memory. This enables deep integration between hardware performance, operating systems, and professional software applications.
Tasks such as document search, presentation creation, knowledge retrieval, workflow scheduling, and select AI coding applications are increasingly expected to run locally on PCs as on-device compute performance improves, reducing dependence on cloud computing resources and token consumption.
As AI agents become more widely adopted, PCs are expected to evolve from passive productivity tools into proactive assistants. This shift is likely to transform replacement demand from hardware-specification-driven upgrades toward application-value-driven upgrades, becoming a major growth driver for the notebook market after 2027.
Windows on Arm, Apple M-series, and Chromebooks drive new momentum for Arm-based notebooks
AI notebooks are still dominated by Windows x86 platforms, with penetration expected to increase from 6.8% in 2025 to 14.5% in 2026, eventually accounting for approximately 50.7% of the total notebook market by 2029.
In comparison, Windows on Arm AI laptops currently remain at an earlier stage of adoption, but growth is expected to accelerate significantly as Qualcomm and NVIDIA expand participation in the ecosystem. TrendForce projects Windows on Arm AI notebook penetration to rise from 1.2% in 2025 to 3.2% in 2026, before further increasing to 11.5% by 2029. This highlights the growing influence of Arm architecture within the Windows notebook market.
Beyond Windows on Arm, Apple’s M-series products are expected to maintain an approximately 17% share of the notebook market, continuing to serve as a major pillar of the Arm-based notebook ecosystem. Meanwhile, as Intel and AMD have increasingly shifted resources toward AI notebooks and premium commercial systems in recent years, investment in the Chromebook market has become relatively conservative. This creates opportunities for MediaTek to further expand its Chromebook penetration through AI Chromebook platforms.
TrendForce forecasts Arm-based notebook penetration to reach 34.2% by 2029, driven collectively by Windows on Arm devices, the Apple M-series, and Chromebooks.
TrendForce further notes that with Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform (N1/N1X), Qualcomm Snapdragon X, and additional Arm-based processors entering the market in the coming years, the Windows notebook industry is expected to gradually transition away from the long-standing Intel-AMD duopoly toward a new competitive landscape featuring multiple architectures and platforms.
