Worldwide K-12 mobile PC shipments expanded by 5.5% YoY to reach 11.1 million units, compared to 10.5 million units which delivered in Q2 2023. Shipment activity in the second quarter has been boosted by a combination of the beginning of the device refresh and the seasonal upswing in deliveries ahead of the new academic year in North America and Europe.
The fleet refresh is also expected to be critical to the progress of the market during the next few years, although this may depend on the scale of funding being made available for procurement and the continued desire to engage with technology as a central learning tool.
The emergence of AI in terms of cloud-based services and mobile PCs with integrated AI, will be key feature of device procurement in the mid to long term. However, in the immediate future AI activity is expected to be limited as a result of the high investment costs, the ongoing development work on AI integrated devices, and app support. Consequently, initial activity will be focused on test deployments as opposed to a wide scale roll-out.