According to Lucas Lee, Industry Analyst for Emerging Computing & Applications at MIC, Taiwanese server system shipment volume topped around 1.06 million units, declining 6.8% sequentially in the second quarter of 2013. This marks the second consecutive quarter of declining shipments. Shipment value arrived approximately US$1.22 billion with a decline rate slightly higher than anticipated.

"Affected by the uncertainty in economy, enterprises have been conservative about IT spending which led to conservative market demand in the first half. In addition, first-tier server branded vendors have been shifting business focus from hardware to software since 2012, given the fact that IBM, Dell, HP and Fujitsu all have launched services in related to big data analysis, private and public clouds," said Lucas Lee.

In 2013, with ARM architecture being speedily introduced into the server industry, Intel has been actively updating its product portfolios by launching the updated version of Xeon and Atom series processors. At the same time, AMD has continued to progress toward the niche markets such as HPC (High Performance Computing) and MicroServer while releasing its ARM-based products.

In August, IBM announced that it would join hands with Google and Nvidia to form OpenPOWER alliance. Through the strategic alliance, IBM would license POWER (Performance Optimization with Enhanced RISC) architecture to alliance members and develop equipment such as servers and network communications devices accordingly. Forming such alliance is going to help build an ecosystem around the RISC architecture with an aim to prevent RISC architectures' market share to decline further.

Outlook for 2H 2013

The traditionally peak season for server systems, driven by enterprises' usual year-end rush to use up budgets, the replacement demand for older hardware equipment and the imminent openings of several data centers around the world, shipment volume of server systems is expected to see a boost in the second half of 2013. If the shipment volume remains at the level similar to previous years, the shipment ratio of the first and second half of 2013 will be further parted to around 43:57.

To see more about this report, please visit: The Taiwanese Server System and Server Motherboard Industries, 3Q 2013.

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About MIC

Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), based in Taipei, Taiwan, was founded in 1987. MIC is Taiwan's premier IT industry research and consulting firm providing intelligence, in-depth analysis, and strategic consulting services on global IT product and technology trends, focusing on markets and industries in Asia-Pacific. MIC is part of the Institute for Information Industry. https://mic.iii.org.tw/english