Global server shipments are anticipated to pick up by 2.3% in 2025, surpassing 15 million units, according to DIGITIMES' latest report covering server market shipments and performance in 2025. However, the growth rate will be lower than in 2024 as intensifying global tariff wars and escalating geopolitical tensions will lead to more conservative enterprise investments, with a focus on increasingly mature large language model (LLM) applications.
While demand for high-priced, high-end AI servers will continue to grow significantly, the pace of growth will slow. Major North American cloud service providers (CSPs) will remain the primary drivers of server shipment growth in 2025, but US-based brands' shipment growth is expected to face pressure.
Taiwanese server ODMs are projected to underperform the overall global server market in 2025. This is mainly due to the relatively low shipment base of Chinese ODMs in 2024 and aggressive procurements from Chinese server brands such as Lenovo in 2025, allowing the Chinese ODMs' shipments to improve, data from DIGITIMES' report shows.
Among the top-6 ODMs worldwide, Foxconn is anticipated to see the largest increase in shipment share, driven by strong growth in general-purpose server orders from its second-largest customer, Microsoft, as well as orders for Nvidia GB200 NVL72 server cabinets. Wiwynn is also expected to benefit from general-purpose and AI server orders from Meta and Amazon.
Regarding major brand and CSP rankings, among the four leading North American CSPs, Meta and Amazon are expected to perform the best in procurement. Microsoft, having already reached a high procurement base in 2024, is expected to experience slower growth in 2025, while Google is forecasted to see a slight decline.
Click here to visit the 2025 server market report for more data and information.
Demand for servers are expected to be stimulated by the price reduction of DDR5 and SSDs as both DDR5 and SSD supplies are expected to be sufficient, resulting in their prices likely to have room for decline.
Article edited by Joseph Chen