Server market revenue up 17 percent in the first quarter of 2015

Figures released today from two major research organizations show that the worldwide server market has made a strong start to to 2015.

According to Gartner shipments grew 13 percent year on year, while revenue increased 17.9 percent from the first quarter of 2014. IDC's Quarterly Server Tracker shows server revenue up 17.2 percent to $12.8 billion in the first quarter of 2015.

"The first quarter of 2015 was a particularly strong start to the year, with the strongest shipment growth since the third quarter of 2010, when the market was recovering from the downturn. It was also the second-largest-volume quarter ever," says Adrian O'Connell, research director at Gartner. "The market was driven by particularly strong demand from the hyperscale area, which benefited North America, in particular. This comes at a time when other regions are struggling, due to price pressure driven by the appreciation of the U.S. dollar. The strength in North America was strong enough to offset declines in Latin America and Japan. EMEA was barely positive, with 1 percent volume growth".

Both sets of figures show that HP still holds the top slot in the server market with around 24 percent market share, followed by Dell and IBM on around 18 and 14 percent respectively. Lenovo and Cisco are neck and neck for fourth, each on around seven percent. Lenovo showed the strongest growth in shipments according to Gartner though, up almost 240 percent in the first quarter.

iCharts

 

Most of the market growth is down to demand for x86 systems, whilst RISC/Itanium Unix server shipments declined. Demand for high-end systems showed revenue growth though driven partly by IBM's refresh of its z13 mainframe range.

"Even as high-end systems are increasingly being deployed on x86 platforms, opportunities for long-term non-x86 growth still exist with OpenPower and ARM, as customers are looking for non-x86 alternatives to hyperscale problems," says Kuba Stolarski, Research Manager, Enterprise Servers at IDC. "Some of that transformation is likely to occur in the greenfield opportunities related to Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, while optimizing hardware and software for hyperscale datacenter workloads continues to be a driver of design innovation and supply chain diversification."

More information on server market performance is available from Gartner and from IDC.

Photo Credit:  dotshock/Shutterstock