deal!Huawei sells X86 server business

On November 8th, the data of Aiqi investigation showed that the previousHuaweiThe controlling shareholder of Super Fusion Digital Technology Co., Ltd. has been changed to Henan Super Juneng Technology Co., Ltd., which may indicate that Huawei has sold its X86 server business.

It is understood that the buyers of Huawei’s X86 server business will be composed of industrial funds, overseas sovereign funds, Internet companies, banks and other social capital.

(Picture from Aiqicha)

According to OFweek, Huawei’s server business is mainly divided into two parts, one is servers based on the X86 architecture, and the other is servers based on the Arm architecture. Among them, the servers based on the X86 architecture account for Huawei. The vast majority of server shipments, andARMThe server is mainly aimed at party and government agencies, institutions, large state-owned enterprises and state-owned banks. This time Huawei plans to sell the X86 server business.

Earlier, it was reported that due to the restriction order, Huawei’s X86 server business is difficult to operate. Huawei will package and sell its server product line to the Jiangsu SASAC. However, at the time, some Huawei insiders denied that Huawei would not give up its X86. Server business.

(Picture from OFweek Veken)

In fact, as early as September 24, Huawei’s rotating chairman Xu Zhijun responded to the topic of X86 servers at the Full Connect Conference. He said, “Huawei’s X86 server business has indeed encountered difficulties, and everyone is aware of the difficulties encountered. We are also thinking of various ways to actively solve the problem. There are some potential investors in contact, and they are still in the process of talking. We will inform you if there is clear news.”

On November 2 this year, another foreign media reported that Huawei was planning to sell its X86 server business and was negotiating with potential buyers, and said that two companies currently intend to take over the business.

On November 8, according to the latest news from Aiqicha, after inquiring about the industrial and commercial registration, it was discovered that the shareholder of Super Fusion Digital Technology Co., Ltd., which was previously controlled by Huawei, had been changed to Henan Super Fusion Technology Co., Ltd., which indicated that Huawei had changed its X86 server Business sale.

In addition, industry sources revealed that the buyers of Huawei’s X86 server business will be composed of industrial funds, overseas sovereign funds, Internet companies, banks and other social capital.

Currently, Huawei has not yet responded to the news.

Huawei ranked fifth in the global server market

According to relevant statistics, in the global server market in the third quarter of 2020, Dell Technology Group ranked first with a revenue share of 20.7%, H3C ranked second with a revenue share of 15.9%, and Inspur ranked 9.4. % Revenue share ranks third, Lenovo ranks fourth with 5.9% share, and Huawei ranks fifth with 4.9% share.

But in the first quarter of 2021, Huawei fell out of the top five list, and IBM ranked fifth. In the global server market in the second quarter of this year, IDC data showed that Huawei’s market share was only 2.5% (4.5% in the same period last year), and its revenue fell 45.9% year-on-year.

In the division of Huawei’s server business, there are two types of X86 and ARM architectures, of which X86 servers mainly useIntelChips need to be purchased exclusively, and the ARM server product line is a self-developed Kunpeng chip, such as the Kunpeng 920 released in 2019processor, Shengteng series chips based on Da Vinci architecture, oriented to AI accelerator cards and AI servers.

Although X86 is still the mainstream architecture in the server field, especially the domestic X86 architecture server market share exceeds 90%, but with Ali and other vendors also launching the ARM architectureServer chip, The market share of ARM architecture will continue to grow in the future.

However, for Huawei, industry analysts believe that Huawei sells X86 servers because of the limited supply of chips. Since there is no way to continue to develop X86 servers at this stage, the supplier is not confident enough to re-supply in the future. It is better to sell in exchange for development funds. In the case of limited X86 architecture chips, ARM has also become the choice of most new players. In addition, Huawei has a permanent license for the ARMv8 instruction set, at least not worrying about being “stuck” in subsequent development, and can continue to iterate on product research and development.

However, compared with the previous sale of Honor, because the x86 server product line is not Huawei’s core business, the impact of putting down the business on Huawei is much smaller, and the related business contraction is only temporary. Since the chip limitation and other issues cannot be solved in the short term, it is not impossible to try other tracks and find new business growth points.