Server market slumps in Q2 as mid and high-range demand falls
The analyst found that HPE and Dell were neck and neck yet again for the top spot in the market
Global server market revenues dropped 2.5 per cent year over year to $23.6bn (€19.9bn) during the second quarter of 2021.
According to IDC figures, global server shipments surpassed 3.2 million during the quarter, an increase of just 0.1 per cent over the previous year.
The analyst claimed volume server revenue was up 5.6 per cent to nearly $20bn (€16.8bn).
However, figures for midrange and high-end servers had a knock-on effect for the overall market, with IDC publishing declines of 30 per cent to $2.4bn (€2.027bn) and 32.7 per cent to $1.3bn (€1.098bn) respectively.
"Broadly speaking, server market performance was muted in the second quarter as the market shifted slightly towards single socket server configurations," said IDC Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies senior research analyst, Paul Maguranis.
"While servers purchased directly from ODMs declined year over year, some past backlog recovery within the hyperscale datacenter community contributed to a large jump in this segment when compared to the first quarter of this year."
Server market standings by company
IDC data saw HPE and Dell in a statistical tie for the top position in the worldwide server market.
This was also the case in Q2 2020 despite both companies seeing reductions in their respective shares.
The revenue shares for the two companies for Q2 of this year were 15.7 per cent and 15.6 per cent respectively.
While HPE grew 3.4 per cent, Dell had the upperhand in growth with a 10.2 per cent increase.
Inspur/Inspur Power Systems ranked third with 9.4 per cent revenue share. Lenovo was in fourth place while IBM came in at fifth, with seven per cent share and five per cent share respectively.
Q1 comparisons
These results for the second quarter differ slightly from IDC's Q1 figures for the market.
Revenues were up 12 per cent to $20.9bn (€17bn) in the first quarter of 2021.
Sales of volume servers were still up by 15.4 per cent to $17.3bn (€14.2bn), however midrange server sales also fell by 2.7 per cent to $2.4bn (€1.9bn).
Maguranis noted at the time the market benefitted from a comparison against "the most difficult quarter" of last year's pandemic stricken year, adding this fact didn't tell a "complete story."
He said the considerable increase of server investments during the quarter were also buoyed by "global economic tailwinds" along with "increased investments targeting the modernisation of business applications, datacenter infrastructure, and IT operations."