The global server market grew 12% year-on-year to US$20.9 billion, in the first quarter of the year. According to IDC’s quarterly server tracker, worldwide server shipments were up 8.3% over this time last year, to nearly 2.8 million units in Q1 2021.
"The first quarter 2021 server market performance benefited from a comparison against the most difficult quarter of last year's pandemic stricken year, but this fact doesn't tell a complete story," said Paul Maguranis, senior research analyst, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC.
"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, datacentre infrastructure, and IT operations,” he explained.
Sales of volume servers climbed by 15.4% to US$17.3 billion during Q1, but mid-range machine sales declined by 2.7% to US$2.4 billion. High-end server sales grew by just 0.1% to US$1.2 million.
Dell Technologies led the pack in Q1 2021, accounting for 17% of total revenue. HPE/H3C was the second largest vendor amassing 15.9% of total revenue. Inspur/Inspur Power Systems generated 7.2% of the market revenue, and Lenovo came in fourth with 6.9% total market revenue.
ODM Direct group account for 26.3% of total server revenue during the quarter.
