Taiwanese Server Makers in the Forefront of New Waves

choi

(1) An overview.

The server market | Shifting Sands; Upheaval at the less visible end of the computer industry. Economist, June 1, 2013.
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... stry-shifting-sands

Quote:

"IBM [] servers are aimed at the higher end * * * It [IBM] was talking to Lenovo, a Chinese company which bought its PC operations in 2005, about a sale of part of its server business. However, talks recently broke down, apparently because IBM sought a higher price than Lenovo was willing to pay.

"But perhaps the most important shift in the server business is not among the leading names, but away from them. * * *  And the giants of the internet [eg Facebook, Amazon, Google] are a new sort of customer: they are creating their own designs and buy from contract manufacturers, notably in Taiwan. Thus the huge data centres Facebook is building in America and Sweden contain servers supplied by Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese maker of PCs for Apple, HP and others that branched into servers a few years ago.

My comment:
(a) The Economist article cites
(i) Gartner Says Worldwide Server Shipments Declined 0.7 Percent; Revenue Declined 5 Percent in First Quarter of 2013. Gartner, May 28, 2013.
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2497015
(ii) Worldwide Server Market Revenues Decrease 7.7% in First Quarter as Market Demand Slows, According to IDC. IDC, May 29, 2013.
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24136113

But there is no need to read any of the three.
(b) A graphic in the Economist article shows for 1Q13:
(i) ranking by revenue: IBM = HP > Dell >> Oracle > Fujitsu
(ii) ranking by units shipped: HP> Dell >> IBM> Fujitsu (data on Oracle not available)

choi

(2) Tom Orlik, 杨元庆：联想计划扩大服务器和存储业务. 华尔街日报中文版, June 6, 2013
http://cn.wsj.com/gb/20130606/tec132023.asp

, which is translated from

Tom Orlik and Andrew Browne, Lenovo Plans Push in Servers and Storage, CEO Says. Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 28353754860028.html
("According to research firm IDC, Lenovo shipped 7.9 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2013, more than three times the 2.5 million it shipped a year earlier—but representing just 3.7% of the global market")

My comment:
(a) The move is late, compared to Taiwanese companies which is small and nimble --or, lean and mean in American jargon.
(b) There is no need to read the WSJ report or IDC press release. The latter did not contain the information of Lenovo seeling 2.5 million smartphones in 1Q13; presumably that information is contained in IDC's report privy to subscribers only.

choi

(3) Tiernan Ray, Amazon’s Web Services Threatens Almost All IT, Says Morgan Stanley. Barron's, May 29, 2013, Quoting Devitt S et al, ___. Morgan Stanley, _ _, 2013 (the latter is for clients only)
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtra ... ays-morgan-stanley/
("We expect on-premise server growth to remain negative long-term * * * Partially offsetting the decline is 20% growth in servers shipped to cloud providers, though some of the demand is fulfilled by whitebox makers like Quanta and Wistron")


(4) Timothy Prickett Morgan, Taiwanese Giant Quanta Sold One out of Every Seven Servers Last Year; 'Hyperscale serving came to us, and we own it.'  The Register, May 12, 2013
http://www.theregister.co.uk/201 ... le_server_business/
("Quanta doesn't just build servers; it can do storage and switching, and honestly, in a modern hyperscale data center, these are converging anyway")