The FINANCIAL — China's total shipment of X86 servers reached nearly 364,000 units in Q2 2013, up 15.4% compared with Q2 2012, according to IDC China Quarterly X86 Server Tracker.
At the same time, the factory revenue of China X86 server market in Q2 2013 reached USD 1.06 billion, up 19.6% from the same period last year. In terms of both shipment and factory revenue, international vendors face huge challenges from local ones, according to IDC.
"The market growth in this quarter was mainly driven by strong Internet industry demands and procurement requirements of the government-funded high-performance computer project. With the exclusion of these two market segment, the overall demands were considerably weak,” said Eric Peng, Research Manager, Enterprise System Research, IDC China.
"The demand for X86 servers was weak in the first half of 2013 due to China’s slower economic growth, insufficient export growth and fixed asset investment slowdown.”
Grace Cui, Market Analyst, Enterprise System Research, IDC China points out that the slow growth of the government industry over the past several quarters aggravated the situation “This is, in part, due to a longer decision-making cycle within government bodies, as seen in the government succession and the opening of the 'two sessions' -the First Session of the 12th National People's Congress and the First Session of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference."
The shipment of two-way servers in Q2 2013 grew by 24.4% compared to the same period in the previous year. This is significantly higher than the average growth rate of the X86 server market, according to IDC.
Two-way servers have become a driver for the overall market growth with the development of two-way rack products mostly benefitting the procurement requirements of Internet companies and the Milkyway-2 supercomputer system developed by the National University of Defense Technology.
"With the rapid increase of government revenue in the next half of 2013, as well as gradual implementation of strategies such as Information Consumption and Broadband China, IDC expects to see demand improving from the government and related industries in 2014. However, IDC recognizes that it is difficult for such series of policies to take any significant effect in the second half of 2013,” said Peng.
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