Driven by AI growth and Nvidia’s GPU dominance, the global server market exploded with a 91% surge in Q4 2024, hitting $77.3 billion, says report.
The global server market achieved record-breaking revenue of $77.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024, marking a significant 91% year-over-year (YoY) surge, as reported by the International Data Corporation (IDC). This increase represents the second-highest growth rate since 2019, indicating strong demand for server infrastructure across various industries.
Revenue from x86 servers, the most common server architecture, rose by 59.9% to $54.8 billion. Meanwhile, non-x86 servers experienced an impressive 262.1% surge, reaching $22.5 billion for the quarter.
Servers featuring embedded graphics processing units (GPUs) contributed substantially to this growth, with their revenue expanding by 192.6% YoY. For the entire year, servers with embedded GPUs accounted for over 50% of the total market revenue.
The adoption of servers equipped with these, driven by hyperscalers and cloud service providers, has played a crucial role in propelling the server market’s expansion. This rapid growth has more than doubled the market size since 2020, reaching a total of $235.7 billion in revenue for 2024.
Nvidia continued its dominant position in the GPU server space, holding more than 90% of total embedded GPU shipments in Q4 2024.
“IDC anticipates continued robust AI adoption as hyperscalers, cloud service providers, private enterprises, and governments prioritise these technologies,” said Lidice Fernandez, IDC‘s Group Vice President for Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers.
“At the same time, energy consumption concerns will push data centres to seek more efficient server architectures to optimise their energy usage,” she said.
Regionally, the United States saw the second-fastest growth in the server market, behind Canada, with a 118.4% increase in 4Q24 compared to the same period in 2023. Despite this, the US still accounted for 56% of total global server revenue in the quarter. Canada, by contrast, contributed just 1.1% of global revenue. China experienced remarkable growth, with a 93.3% increase YoY, contributing nearly 25% of the total revenue worldwide for Q4.
Other regions, including Japan, APeJC (Asia Pacific excluding Japan and China), and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), all saw substantial double-digit growth, with rates of 66.9%, 43.8%, and 28.2%, respectively. Latin America, on the other hand, had a more modest growth rate of 7%.
Brand wise, Dell Technologies and Supermicro finished Q4 2024 in a statistical tie for the leading position in terms of revenue share, with 7.2% and 6.5%, respectively. Dell Technologies achieved a YoY revenue increase of 20.6%, while Supermicro saw a more significant 55% growth. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IEIT Systems, and Lenovo were tied for second place, with shares ranging between 5.5% and 4.9%.
The ODM Direct group, a category that includes large-scale vendors selling directly to end customers, commanded a dominant 47.3% of the market share in Q4, generating $36.57 billion in revenue, a year-over-year increase of 155.5%.
According to the report, the “Rest of Market” category, which includes other vendors, contributed 23.7% of total revenue, reflecting a solid 65.9% growth.
Looking ahead, the report highlighted that as the server industry continues to grow and adapt to new technologies like artificial intelligence, it remains crucial for organisations to stay ahead by embracing new infrastructure trends and optimising energy consumption.
