Taiwan's revenues for server motherboards, servers, storage devices and related network equipment are expected to rise 4.7% on year to reach NT$494.3 billion (US$15.28 billion) in 2015. The growth will be weaker than that seen in 2014 and 2013, as enterprises have not invested in server products as much as expected. Global server shipments are also expected to drop 6.3% from the 2014 level to reach only 9.71 million units in 2015, according to Digitimes Research's new report on the server sector.
Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Inventec and Quanta Computer are the top-3 server makers worldwide with each of them seeing annual revenues from related product lines stay above NT$100 billion.
China-based server makers are expected to see their shipments grow 8.1% on year in 2015, excluding the volume from Lenovo's acquired IBM server department. China makers' combined market share will rise to 11.5% globally. If the shipments from the IBM server business are taken into consideration, China's server market share will be higher, Digitimes Research's figures show.
With China's server players, such as Huawei, gradually raising their in-house production rates, Taiwan server makers' shipments are expected to decrease 6.7% on year to reach 8.57 million units in 2015 with their worldwide market share dropping slightly to 88.2%.
Foxconn, Wistron, Quanta and Inventec are the top-4 server makers in Taiwan, but their shares of Taiwan's overall server shipments have been dropping as brand vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell have been shifting portions of their orders to smaller makers to reduce risks.