As star performers of the digital industry report disappointing sets of results, there are signs that infrastructure providers may take a hit. This will be a change after a mini boom in the data center provider industry, with builders such as Duport Fabros Technology (DFT) posting results that suggest vibrant growth.

In 2012 Google, Amazon, eBay, Apple and Facebook all invested heavily in building an IT bedrock for their global enterprises. That expenditure helped the networking and storage vendors whose equipment goes into their data centers and data centers by companies like DFT, whose clients install their equipment there.

Whether this will be a major quake or minor tremor remains to be seen. Market watchers have already marked down expectations for next year, with UBS analyst Amitabh Passi predicting that data center capital spending will rise only three percent in 2013, down from 37% this year.

Amazon has been a prolific spender on data centers, even by its own standards, with investment rising by 36% on 2011, taking this year's total to US$2.47 billion. However its recent quarterly loss of $274m has created a massive dip in confidence, in spite of the fact that the small loss comes on sales of about $13.81bn and has been attributed – in a note sent to investors – to a massive write-down on its investment in LivingSocial. Amazon says its growth in data center investment will slow to 5.7% in the next year.

Meanwhile, many IT vendors have just begun to show signs of recovery. Inspired by a four-percent rise in revenue to about $1.12m, Juniper CFO Robyn Denholm, said recently: “With our workforce restructuring largely complete, we’re well prepared to capture the market opportunity ahead.”

The management were more cautious at storage vendor EMC, whose third-quarter profit improved 3.4%. Though growing demand for cloud-computing technology has recently helped it to a six-percent rise in revenue with yearly takings projected at $21.75bn, EMC's president and COO David Goulden seemed to be getting his excuses in early.

“The environment in Q3 turned out to be more cautious than we had expected with several issues weighing on customers' minds,” he said, citing uncertain global economic growth, the US presidential election, spending scrutiny and longer deal cycles. “EMC's growth is less than expected, but we did show growth,” said Goulden.

DFT meanwhile is enjoying a mini boom, reporting $85.4m in revenue for the third quarter, which is 16% up on last year.

They shouldn't get too carried away as that could all end soon, according to IDC, which reported that a period of data center consolidation looms.

"By 2016, IDC expects the total number of data centers in the U.S. will decline from 2.94m in 2012 to 2.89m. This decline will be concentrated in internal server rooms and closets, with a very small decline in midsize local data centers," said the IDC report. There was some good news however. "Despite the slight decline in total data centers, total data center space will increase significantly, growing from 611.4m square feet in 2012 to more than 700m square feet in 2016."