a growth season for our battery PCM business. And in terms of looking out further, I think the premium bones should do better. They're not immune to it, but at the same time, there's a little more ability for consumers to bear some of the price increases there. So that's where we see the battery business.
Okay, and then I wasn't clear what you were indicating about the PC business beyond the fiscal first quarter and into the second quarter. What are your customers indicating about build intensity there, Stephen?
Yeah, we mainly see September as the main correction. You know, we're not right now, you know, December quarter is still a little fuzzy to see exactly, but we're not, right now we're not expecting a correction at that point. But, you know, we have to just see what the memory situation is like.
Okay. And then just a clarification on operating expense. So we knew that we were going to increase R&D expense this year for new product work in advanced compute. It seems like that's having a positive impact. Can you help us understand the longer-term thinking about how you're weighing increased R&D intensity in the business?
Is this something that we should expect would persist in calendar 27, or do you exit 26 with the product programs in the right place so R&D expense would grow to a more normalized level beyond this year? thank you yeah for us you know we are in this investment mode where we are investing in the r d most of that on that spend increase in spending we expect it to be be done in this calendar year in terms of the additional investments to build up the teams and build up the technology capabilities to to address these additional growth opportunities so most of that expansion we expect to happen this year. I would expect next year will be more just kind of standard organic type of growth as opposed to a stepped-up growth this year.
Got it. Thank you, Stephen. Sure.
Operator
As a reminder, if you have any follow-up questions, please press star one to add yourself to the queue. Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Muth from David Williams. Your line is now open. please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for taking my question. This is Patrick Muth on for David Williams over at Needham. Just a couple of questions. So as AI becomes a bigger share of revenue, should we expect gross margins to improve mainly because of this mixed shift, or is there a ceiling to how much AI volume can offset any weakness elsewhere and then maybe also provide more color on the magnitude of the gross margin improvement from the mixed shift in the second half of the calendar year. Thank you.
Sure. This is an area that we've been excited to take part and to see our products being adopted into these high-performance applications. We are still in that ramping mode in terms of several of these products were released either late last calendar year or beginning of this calendar year. So the ramp that we saw and it was really starting just from this March quarter onwards. And we are continuing to design in our solutions and to win business. And so in general, we expect to see this segment continue to grow in the coming quarters. And as we win more projects and as we open up to more customers. Yes, I'll stop there.
Operator
We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Stephen Pleio for closing remarks.
Okay, great. before before we conclude i'd like to just highlight a few upcoming investor events the management team will be participating in the seventh annual needham virtual semiconductor and semi-cap one-on-one conference on august 20th also be at the jeffrey simi's it hardware and communications technology summit august 26th in chicago illinois on the benchmark 2026 tech media and telecom conference on september 10th in new york new york if you wish to request a meeting please contact the institutional sales representative at the sponsoring bank this concludes our earnings call today thank you for your interest in aos and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter thank you thank you this concludes today's call
Operator
Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.
