Server sales tumble in Q1 - analyst

Enterprise demand for x86 servers dwindles

Worldwide server sales tumbled in Q1 as the demand from enterprises dwindled, according to IDC.

The analyst claimed that total revenue declined six per cent year on year to $18.6bn, with some of the biggest vendors in the market seeing greater declines.

Market leader Dell saw sales drop 13 per cent to $3.5bn, while second-placed HPE saw revenue fall 18.7 per cent to $2.9bn.

IDC said that the fall can be attributed to enterprise demand for x86 servers shrinking, which in turn has been largely caused by "Macroeconomic impacts".

ODM direct vendors continued to grow their market share, up to 25.9 per cent with sales of $4.8bn.

IDC analyst Sebastian Lagana said: "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.

"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."

Broken down into classes, volume server revenue was down 2.1 per cent to $15.1bn; midrange server revenue declined 23 per cent to just under $2.6bn; while high-end systems declined by 9.1 per cent to just under $1bn.