Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news in the morning of August 17, Beijing time, cloud computing and data centers have always been the most important sources of business for the chip industry, but now they may become its next problem: there are signs that, as consumers sign up for cloud computing entertainment services and companies reconfigure their offices, the growth of this pillar industry during the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States will also slow.

Analysts say that as more and more companies adopt cloud computing technology, the industry has risen rapidly over the past decade, so the cloud computing industry rarely needs to adapt to a prolonged economic downturn, so it is difficult to predict whether it will be immune to the recession. from the impact of an economic downturn.

Technology giants have said that as the United States is mired in the worst inflation in 40 years, placing a heavy burden on consumers, economists are also worried about the recession, and advertisers are also tightening spending.

"investors are worried about the landing of the other boot." Said Stasi Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at investment bank Bernstein. He added that the advertising spree had an impact on companies such as Facebook and Snapchat and could dampen investment in data centers.

In the latest earnings season, tech giants have revealed that annual cloud revenue growth may slow-- Alphabet's Google Cloud is down 8 percent, Microsoft's Azure is down 6 percent, and Amazon AWS is down more than 3 percent.

Nathaniel Harmon, director of research at YipitData, a market research firm, said revenue in the cloud computing market was still growing fast, but he also pointed out that there were also some signs of weakness in places such as Europe.

The three companies said during the outbreak that in order to save money, they would extend the use of data center equipment, possibly from three to six years in some cases.

"if they cut back on data center spending, Intel or AMD will sell fewer chips," said Glenn O'Donnell, director of research at Forrester Research, a market research firm.

In its latest quarterly report, intel revealed that its data center and artificial intelligence group business shrank 16% to $4.6 billion, $2 billion below wall street expectations. This further adds to the market's concerns.

Last week, Micron offered even worse expectations, this time not just for PC and smartphones, but also for cloud computing.

But Sumit Sadana, Micron's chief business officer, says the dilemma is not as simple as a slowdown in the cloud computing market. Part of the reason is that some chip shortages hinder the production of servers, leading to a backlog of other chips-similar to the shortage of chips in the automotive industry.

Richard Barnett, chief marketing officer of Supplyframe, the electronics industry information service, believes that inventories across the server supply chain are at an all-time high, but key components are in short supply. "suppose the server needs 500 components, and now there is a shortage of 10 or 20, making it impossible to produce."

However, Sadana warns that companies that are worried about the economy will also be conservative when buying chips.

Mr O'Donnell of Forrester says he sees this across the technology industry. "when we talk to customers about our spending plans, a lot of people say, 'you know, we won't turn off the tap, but we will turn it down.'" "this situation will be reflected in Dell and Huihe's financial results," he said. "

While industry executives and analysts argue about the impact of the economic slowdown on the cloud computing market, Super Micro Computer, which specializes in customizing servers for new technologies, says developments in industries such as self-driving cars and metasmos will still create new demand.

"as many projects come out of the lab and begin to actually land, there is still a lot of pent-up growth potential." Said Michael McNerney (Michael McNerney), vice president of marketing and cyber security at the company.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.