Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and concluded that vendor revenue in the global server market contracted for the first time after nine quarters.
Apparently, the second quarter of 2019 saw revenue decline by 11.6 percent year on year to just over $20 billion, which is the first time anything has fallen since the first quarter of 2016.
A slowdown in demand from cloud providers and hyperscale customers were the main reasons for the decline
All classes of the server were affected, with high-end systems revenue experiencing the most significant blow, contracting 20.8 per cent to $1.3 billion. Volume server revenue was down 11.7 per cent to $16.3 billion and mid-range server turnover was down 4.6 per cent to $2.4 billion.
Sebastian Lagana, research manager of infrastructure platforms and technologies at IDC said that things are rather different from a year ago when the server market realised unprecedented growth.
“Irrespective of the difficult compare, factors impacting the market include a slowdown in purchasing from cloud providers and hyperscale customers, and an off-cycle in the cyclical non-x86 market, as well as a slowdown from enterprises due to existing capacity slack and macroeconomic uncertainty.”
The long-running battle between Dell and HPE for market share resulted in a tie in Q2.
Dell took a 19 per cent share of the market, with HPE had 18 per cent.
IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide server market when there is a difference of one per cent or less in the share of revenues or shipments among two or more vendors, resulting in the two rivals having to 
share the crown.
Third-placed Inspur saw its share of the market grow 32.3 per cent to $1.4 billion. Fourth-placed Lenovo and fifth-placed IBM saw their revenue slide 21.8 per cent and 27.4 per cent, respectively.
