Dell Technologies underlines AI PCs and Workstations as the Next Phase of Enterprise AI

Dell Technologies outlined how enterprise AI adoption across Asia Pacific is moving from experimentation to implementation, with 48% of organizations with more than 500 employees in the region already deploying AI PCs and 95% expecting workstations to play a critical or important role in AI initiatives over the next two years.

Two IDC InfoBriefs, commissioned by Dell Technologies and Intel reinforce this shift – Future-Ready Workforce: The Strategic Case for AI PC Adoption and Powering Future-Ready Computing with Workstations: Built for AI. Built for You. The research highlights growing enterprise momentum behind both intelligent endpoints and higher-performance systems as organizations shape the next phase of AI adoption.

For Dell, this shift reflects a broader industry trend toward aligning the right compute resources with specific workload requirements, as organizations balance intelligent endpoints for everyday productivity with high-performance systems designed for advanced AI and professional use cases. Enterprise AI deployments are increasingly spanning client devices, edge environments and the data center, reflecting a more distributed approach across the IT environment.

Jacinta Quah, Vice President, Client Solutions Group, Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China (APJC), Dell Technologies said, “AI PCs and workstations are not simply device categories in a refresh cycle – they are foundational platforms built for a future-ready enterprise AI era. AI PCs bring intelligence to everyday workflows, at the fingertips of employees where data is generated. Meanwhile, workstations provide the performance and control needed for more specialized, compute-intensive workloads. Together, they enable organizations to scale AI more effectively, strengthen security and privacy, and drive meaningful business outcomes.”

AI PCs: Bringing intelligence closer to everyday work

AI PCs are becoming a core component of the modern workplace, enabling AI workloads to run directly on the device to deliver faster, more responsive user experiences while reducing reliance on continuous cloud connectivity. This approach also supports enhanced data privacy and security, provides IT teams with greater control over deployment and management across device fleets, and enables more consistent scaling of AI capabilities across the workforce.

The IDC research commissioned by Dell Technologies and Intel underscores this momentum. As AI becomes embedded in day-to-day work, device strategy is shifting accordingly. 89% of Asia Pacific organizations now consider AI capabilities a very important factor in future PC purchasing decisions. This priority is pronounced in key markets across the region – from Australia and South Korea, where organizations are outpacing the regional average in prioritizing AI in purchase decisions, to India, where advanced AI performance is emerging as the leading evaluation criterion. In China, this urgency is further reinforced by a growing recognition of the risks to employee engagement and decision quality if AI PC adoption is delayed.

In India enterprises are moving beyond pilot projects to integrate AI into core business processes with a relatively high AI PC deployment rate of 51%, propelled by a tech-savvy workforce, a strong focus on operational efficiency, a thriving ISV ecosystem and increasing emphasis on security and data sovereignty.

Organizations with over 50% AI PCs in their fleet report saving 2.17 hours per employee per day, a 30% productivity increase compared to using AI on traditional PCs. AI PCs are enabling a new class of enterprise use cases – from real-time collaboration and report generation to natural language search and content creation – delivering tangible productivity gains.

As organizations prepare for more autonomous and agentic AI in hybrid work environments, AI PCs are increasingly becoming the governed way to scale intelligent experiences across the workforce – safely, consistently, and with clearer business impact.

Four out of five Asia Pacific organizations expect AI PCs to drive adoption of agentic AI, with the same proportion agreeing they enhance control and security for these applications. The broader momentum is clear: 84% of organizations expect AI PCs to increase employee productivity, while 78% cite security benefits and 77% highlight cost advantages of running AI locally.

76% of Indian organizations prioritize AI performance powered by advanced NPUs as the top criterion for AI PCs 15% higher than the Asia Pacific average with security and the ISV ecosystem close behind at 61%

This shift is leading to a tangible investment. Across Asia Pacific, 65% of organizations are willing to pay a premium of 10% or more for AI PCs, reflecting their role as core infrastructure for enterprise AI.

Workstations: Powering advanced AI and specialized workloads

While AI PCs distribute intelligence across the workforce, workstations continue to serve as the performance backbone for more demanding workloads – particularly as organizations shift more AI development on-premise. Developers, engineers, designers, and data teams rely on workstation-class systems for AI model development, simulation, rendering, data preparation, and other compute-intensive activities that require reliability, low latency, and sustained performance.

The IDC research on workstations reflects this reality. 95% of organizations across Asia Pacific expect workstations to play a critical or important role in AI initiatives over the next two years, while 50% would choose a workstation as their preferred device for AI development and 97% of organizations agree workstations are high-performance devices that fuel innovation for the organization by empowering teams to explore cutting-edge technology like AI and Machine Learning models

In India, 95% of organizations surveyed reported higher productivity among workstation users, 76% expect the share of workstations in their fleet to grow over the next five years, and organizations reported strong workstation use for AI deployment (77%) and data preparation (76%). This makes India one of the clearest markets to frame workstations not only as productivity tools, but as increasingly important platforms for advanced AI workflows.

Toward an AI compute continuum that supports the next phase of enterprise AI

Together, AI PCs and workstations form an AI compute continuum, supporting everything from everyday productivity to advanced AI development and professional workloads across the enterprise.

For organizations across Asia Pacific, the next phase of AI will not be defined by a single environment or device category, but by the ability to place the right workload on the right compute. AI PCs are extending AI into everyday workflows, while workstations are helping organizations industrialize more advanced, compute-intensive, and specialized AI use cases. Combined, they give leaders a more practical foundation for scaling AI with greater speed, control, and long-term value.