Microsoft will launch Windows 12 in June 2024, claims a report published by the Commercial Times today. The business-focused Taiwanese newspaper highlighted this date as very important to the island’s PC industry sector, sparking significant sales of a new wave of AI PCs. Leading industry figures from companies like Acer, Quanta, MSI, and Gigabyte were all said to be very excited about “the first year of AI PC” and the business opportunities it will herald.
Though the Commercial Times report leads with its statement about Windows 12 and the purported June release date, no direct quotes from industry leaders are given in support. It implies the information emanated from recent statements by Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen and/or Quanta Chairman Barry Lam.
Both of these important executives from the world of PCs were at the Taiwan Medical Technology Exhibition in Taipei on Thursday. Acer’s Chen was reportedly cautiously optimistic about AI PCs contributing to "continuously accelerate” the industry through a virtuous cycle of AI PCs, new AI app development, new AI PCs, and so on.
Quanta’s Lam was more bullish. He highlighted an expected upturn across three segments for Quanta - AI PC, AI server, and AI automotive electronics. The Commercial Times adds that Lam expects “next summer, when Microsoft launches a new generation of Windows operating systems, AI PCs will also be launched one after another.” However, that doesn't appear to be a direct quote from Mr Lam.
If the June 2024 launch of Windows 12 happens, it will be earlier than a few previous clues have indicated. In March, we reported on an Intel Meteor Lake desktop processor (MTL-S) leak, where the as-yet-unreleased Windows version was apparently listed as a supported operating system. At the time, we pondered over Windows 12 being likely to launch in H2 2024, given its recently adopted three-year cycle. Also, in May, we reported that Microsoft was preparing a new own-branded (Arm?) CPU for Windows 12 devices.
Intel Meteor Lake chips will be important to the mass adoption of accelerated AI due to dedicated processing hardware on all SoCs in this family. Meanwhile, hardware AI acceleration on the latest AMD Ryzen 7000 family offers is less clear-cut. Only Ryzen mobile 7040 ‘Phoenix’ chips have the XDNA architecture hardware to accelerate local AI processing. This will hopefully change, as there are signs of Phoenix coming to desktop, and of the Ryzen 8000 family chips on the way to mobile in the coming months. All this raises the specter that hardware AI processing support could be one of the minimum spec requirements for Windows 12.
