Global Server Shipment Posts Slight Decline in 1Q18

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According to the latest report of DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, the global server shipment experienced slight decline in 1Q18, but the demand for CPU, Server DRAM, and other related components remain flat. The demand for server will see obvious recovery in 2Q18, and global server shipment will grow by nearly 10% compared with 1Q18. For 1H18, Dell EMC, HPE, and Inspur will be the top three server suppliers with shipment market shares of 16.6%, 15%, and 7.2% respectively.

According to Mark Liu, senior analyst at DRAMeXchange, the global server shipment will grow by 4.89% in 2018 compared with 2017, mainly driven by the surging demand for server from North American companies. Enterprise servers contribute to the most of shipments worldwide, while servers used for Hyperscale Internet Data Center account for about 20%-30% of the total shipments. On the other hand, with the industrial transformation and the popularization of cloud technology, enterprise servers face increasing challenges and are gradually replaced by data centers. More attention will be paid to Platform as a Service (PaaS). DRAMeXchange forecasts that the shipment of servers used for Hyperscale Internet Data Center will have a chance to reach nearly 40% in 2020. 

Dell, HPE remain the first and second, but new order is emerging among Chinese brands

In the ranking of shipment market share, North American companies occupy the top places with outstanding performances. Dell EMC and HPE, which rank the first and second, still dominate the market of enterprise server. It is worth mentioning that, with the popularization of cloud computing, Dell EMC has taken a place in the global cloud infrastructure market. However, HPE, which is more profit-oriented, has stopped selling servers for low-gross-profit Hyperscale Server Infrastructure.

Huawei's and Inspur's shipment market shares have risen significantly from last year since the Chinese government has been encouraging domestic companies to adopt servers of domestic brands. Furthermore, majority of servers used by Chinese telecom industry and large-scale data centers are provided by domestic brands. Inspur has also seen steady growth in orders from BAT, telecom operators, and third-party demand. As the result, Inspur surpassed Lenovo for the first time, ranking the third. In the future, the government and more enterprises will use data centers based on internet or provided by telecom operators, which may bring growth momentum to Chinese server manufacturers.