While the global server market is predicted to continue growing in 2019, new research from DRAMeXchange has revealed that this year's server shipment growth has shrunk by 3.9 percent compared to last year under the pressures of business cycles and worldwide uncertainty.
The company's senior analyst Mark Liu pointed out the worldwide server growth momentum in 2018 derived mainly from North American brands which comprised over 30 percent of total shipments.
Enterprise servers still form the largest shipment group though shipments to data centers are growing year by year up from 35 percent in 2018 to 40 percent this year.
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As 5G begins to transform businesses with its global rollout this year, telecommunications companies and internet providers will increase in their demand for servers and current predictions highlight the fact that server shipments are expected to peak in 2020.
Server shipments
Looking back at the first season of this year, data center demand was relatively unaffected by the traditional offseason as total shipments continued to experience stable growth. ODM direct business shipments grew by 1.3 percent compared to the previous season and as orders continue to arrive in the second season, we may still see seasonal growth of around 1 to 3 percent bringing market shares up to to 26.6 percent.
Some brands were hit by the offseason in the first quarter with the their shipments falling by over 20 percent compared to last quarter but the market made a notable recovery during the second.
In terms of global market share rankings of server brand manufacturers in 2H 2019, Dell EMC, HPE and Inspur took the top three spots with market shares of 15.8 percent, 13.7 percent and 7.5 percent respectively.
According to DRAMeXchange, China's top cloud service providers will drop by about 15 percent year over year in server purchases this year, while North American companies will be less affected with their purchases projected to keep growing by 5 to 10 percent.
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