Server unit shipments worldwide 2011-2020, by quarter

In the fourth quarter of 2020, the number of global server unit shipments reached 3.3 million units, an increase of over 200,000 units from the third quarter of the year where 3.07 million shipments were recorded.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) impacts

Analysts have predicted a decline in end user spending on servers in 2020, attributing this to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, with impacts including supply chain shortages as well as a change to demand from various groups of IT buyers. Businesses have been forced to consider more expedited adoption of cloud services, and as a result, the market saw a surge in demand for IT infrastructure, notably in cloud service provider datacenters. This has had an impact on the server market, resulting in a more moderate decline compared to other IT infrastructure segments.

Data center servers

Data centers, centralized locations where computing and networking equipment is concentrated, can house multiple servers stacked in racks that are placed in rows. These facilities are able to collect, store, and process large amounts of data. Organizations of all sizes have continued to expand their data collection capabilities, with their storage needs growing with them too. As a result, IT spending on data center systems worldwide is estimated to amount to 208 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, including servers which form an important part of data center infrastructure.