Global server shipments increased 1.5% quarter-over-quarter in third-quarter 2023 as previously expected, mainly driven by brand vendors launching new platforms, while overall server purchases by large US cloud service providers (CSP) continued to show a slight decline amid a shift in focus to high-priced AI servers, according to the latest figures from DIGITIMES Research's server report.
Global server shipments are expected to increase 3.8% quarter-over-quarter in fourth-quarter 2023, driven by a rebound in shipments of general-purpose servers to large-scale US CSPs and by an increase in AI server shipments.
High interest rates persisted in third-quarter 2023, crippling corporate purchasing, and causing brand vendors such as Dell and HPE to reduce spending on solutions from new Intel and AMD platforms. Meanwhile, large North American CSPs were shifting their purchases to high-end AI servers amid poor results from the traditional cloud computing sector, which resulted in a continued decline in overall server shipments on a quarterly basis, the report stated.
Shipments to Meta and Google both dropped by more than 10% quarterly. Shipments for datacenters in China increased slightly, as a result of a comparison to an already very low base in the previous quarter.
Looking ahead to fourth-quarter 2023, overall shipments to large North American CSPs will rebound. Demand is bottoming out, AI server shipments are expanding, and Amazon is aggressively shifting to its own Arm-based platform. Brand vendors' shipments will grow 4.5% sequentially, driven by shipments featuring new processor platforms. Shipments to large CSPs, such as Meta and Amazon, will also rebound, and Taiwanese ODM Wiwynn will outperform its competitors in terms of shipments.
