The global market for uninterruptible power supply hardware (UPS) grew by just 5% in Q2 from the previous quarter according to IMS Research’s latest analysis of the market. The small quarterly increase highlights the UPS market’s turmoil and means that year-on-year revenues in 2Q09 plummeted over 25% from the record levels seen in early 2008.

However, this humble sequential growth is a stark contrast to 1Q09 when revenues sank by over 20% from 4Q08. “Historically, the UPS market has exhibited seasonal behaviour with the second half of the year outperforming the first,” commented Research Analyst Jason dePreaux. “Though this pattern looks to continue for the rest of 2009, the market has a deep hole to climb out of,” added dePreaux. IMS Research projects that the global UPS market will be down nearly 20% in 2009 followed by a slow recovery due to weakened demand for IT hardware and the long project lead times of three-phase systems.

In spite of the sequential market increase, the world UPS market lost nearly $1 billion in the first-half of this year compared to the first-half of 2008 with all regions and power segments performing poorly.  Hampered by an unfavourable currency conversion and the collapse of Russian and Spanish markets, EMEA has been especially hard-hit and was the only region not to grow from 1Q.

Sub-100 kVA UPS is forecast to recover early in 2010, followed later in the year by higher power segments. Greatest long-term growth is predicted for >100 kVA UPS, as out-sourced commercial computing drives the need for robust and reliable back-up power solutions at large facilities.