Global server market, 1Q 2023

With mature markets continuing to be haunted by high interest rates and inflation, their impacts on consumers' and enterprises' spending have widened, affecting US-based cloud services providers' (CSPs) plans on establishing new datacenters and undermining brand vendors' server orders from enterprises.

Global server shipments performed weaker than DIGITIMES Research had anticipated, slipping 13.8% sequentially to fall below four million units. Having a lower comparison base in the same quarter a year ago and the fact that brand vendors are expected to begin volume shipments of servers with new CPU platforms, overall server shipments are expected to witness a low single-digit sequential growth in the second quarter of 2023.

Large public cloud services providers including Meta and Amazon were pessimistic about their cloud service business in the upcoming quarter and had significantly reduced their order pull-ins in the first quarter of 2023, resulting in a more than 8% sequential decline in US-based datacenter operators' overall shipments.