Server Shipments for 2H17 to Grow by 10% vs. 1H17 as ODM Orders Bounce

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Global server shipments fell in the first quarter of 2017 due to the seasonal effect on demand, according to the latest server market analysis by DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. However, shipments rebounded in the second quarter and rose by about 10% compared with the first quarter. Looking ahead, DRAMeXchange estimates that total shipments for the second half of 2017 will also increase by 10% compared with the first half owing to demand from major technology companies including Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft.

DRAMeXchange analyst Mark Liu pointed out that Greater China accounted for the majority share of the global server shipments in the first half of 2017 because of demand from the region’s data center operators. As a result, Chinese server ODMs such as Huawei, Inspur and Sugon posted stronger-than-expected shipments for the period.

HPE, Dell and Lenovo remained as the top three vendors in shipment market share for this year’s first half

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Dell and Lenovo were, in order, first-, second and third-place in the global server shipment ranking for this year’s first half, respectively taking 18.1%, 17.5% and 6.4% of the total market share. The top three vendors mainly shipped enterprise server solutions during this year’s first half. Going forward, however, a portion of their shipments for this year’s second half will be for data centers in the U.S. and for replacement demand generated by the releases of new servers using Intel’s Purley platform. DRAMeXchange also expects strong shipment growth for the second half of 2017 versus the first half.

“For server ODMs, the largest share of incoming orders for the second half of 2017 will come from Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft,” said Liu. “The next largest source of server demand will be from Greater China, where Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent continue to expand their networks of data centers. The three Chinese technology giants are projected to capture about 10% of this year’s global server shipments.”

DRAMeXchange currently puts the annual growth rate of total server shipments for 2017 at 4%. Enterprise products will still be the mainstream with an estimated total shipment share of 60%. As for data center solutions, they are expected to make up around 30% of servers shipped worldwide this year.