In a recent study Forrester Research asked the question, Will Consumers Pay For A Media Center PC? -- "Dell, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard sell PCs running Microsoft's Windows Media Center software that allows consumers to work with digital media, including music, video, and photos. But are consumers interested in these features? To find out, we surveyed 5,000 households in Forrester's Consumer Technographics North American Study. Our resulting data shows that while as many as 25 percent of consumers are interested in media and entertainment activities on their PCs, only half of these will pay � and most won't pay more than $100 for the features. The study also uncovered that consumers who will pay for media activities want to do so only once."
Enterprise AI budgets are flowing in two directions at once, and only one of them builds an asset the buyer actually controls. Gartner's latest forecast puts worldwide AI spending at $2.7 trillion in 2026, but the composition of that figure matters far more than the total. Executives who read only the headline will miss the tension between what they are buying and what they actually own. The Number Behind the Number Gartner projects 2026 AI spending is a 49.5 percent increase over 2025, with $3.6 trillion forecast for 2027. AI infrastructure accounts for $1.5 trillion of this year's total, more than half. Gartner's John-David Lovelock calls the data center buildout the largest infrastructure project humanity has undertaken, and describes demand as inelastic even as memory prices climb. Compute Concentration is a Sovereignty Issue Gartner expects hyperscalers and service providers buying AI-optimized servers to remain the largest single area of spending. For an enterprise, t...