Worldwide server market revenue declined 6.0% year over year in the first quarter of 2020, according to IDC

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., June 9, 2020 – According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, vendor revenue in the worldwide server market declined 6.0% year over year to $18.6 billion during the first quarter of 2020 (1Q20). Worldwide server shipments declined 0.2% year over year to just under 2.6 million units in 1Q20.

In terms of server class, volume server revenue was down 2.1% to $15.1 billion, while midrange server revenue declined 23.0% to just under $2.6 billion, and high-end systems declined by 9.1% to just under $1.0 billion.

"Server market performance was relatively similar to the fourth quarter, albeit a bit more muted, with bright spots including the ODM Direct vendor group realizing solid demand from its core hyperscaler and cloud provider customer set, and continued strength in the non-x86 server space," said Sebastian Lagana, research manager, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "That said, the OEM market faced stiff headwinds due to a combination of slowing enterprise demand for x86 servers and supply chain constraints, both driven largely by macroeconomic impacts."

Overall Server Market Standings, by Company

The number one position in the worldwide server market in 1Q20 belonged to Dell Technologies with a revenue share of 18.7%. HPE/New H3C Group took the second position at 15.5%, followed by Inspur/Inspur Power Systems at 7.1%. Lenovo and IBM were tied* for the fourth position with market shares of 5.6% and 4.8%, respectively. The ODM Direct group of vendors accounted for 25.9% of total server revenue and was up 6.1% year over year to nearly $4.83 billion. Dell Technologies led the worldwide server market in terms of unit shipments, accounting for 18.4% of all units shipped during the quarter.

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Notes : ***** IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide server market when there is a difference of one percent or less in the share of revenues or shipments among two or more vendors.

**** Due to the existing joint venture between HPE and the New H3C Group, IDC is reporting external market share on a global level for HPE and New H3C Group as "HPE/New H3C Group" starting from 2Q 2016.

**** Due to the existing joint venture between IBM and Inspur, IDC is reporting external market share on a global level for Inspur and Inspur Power Systems as "Inspur/Inspur Power Systems" starting from 3Q 2018.

Top Server Market Findings

On a geographic basis, all regions declined in aggregate during the quarter. Japan outperformed the competitive set, down 0.5%, followed by Latin America at -2.3%, China at -2.6%, and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) at -3.0%. The United States was down 6.1%, and Canada declined 8.3%. Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) declined by double digits, down 11.8% year over year.

Revenue generated from x86 servers decreased 9.1% in 1Q20 to $16.8 billion. Non-x86 servers grew 38.2% year over year to just under $1.8 billion.

IDC's Server Taxonomy

IDC's Server Taxonomy maps the eleven price bands within the server market into three price ranges: volume servers, midrange servers and high-end servers. The revenue data presented in this release is stated as vendor revenue for a server system. IDC presents data in vendor revenue to determine market share position. Vendor revenue represents those dollars recognized by multi-user system and server vendors for ISS (initial server shipment) and upgrade units sold through direct and indirect channels and includes the following embedded server components: Frame or cabinet and all cables, processors, memory, communications boards, operating system software, other bundled software and initial internal and external disk shipments.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the global server market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly unit shipments and revenues (both vendor revenue and value of shipments), segmented by vendor, family, model, region, operating system, price band, CPU type, and architecture. This Tracker is part of the Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker, which provides a holistic total addressable market view of the five key enabling infrastructure technologies for the datacenter (servers, external enterprise storage systems, purpose-built appliances: HCI and PBBA, and datacenter switches).