HP increases lead over IBM, Dell in global server market

IBM EX5 Server
IBM servers didn't do that well in the last quarter

Revenue generated from the sales of servers globally reached $12.57 billion in the second quarter of 2014 according to the latest IDC worldwide quarterly server tracker, which means that the sector is on track to hit $50 billion sales for a full year.

That's a 2.5% improvement year-on-year while the number of servers shipped grew by only 1.2% to 2.2 million, which indicates that the average prices of the servers shipped increased by slightly more than 2% to just over $5,720.

Volume systems experienced a near-5% revenue growth, the fifth consecutive quarterly growth in that segment. Midrange systems grew by 11.6 per cent while high-end enterprise systems saw revenues shrink by nearly 10%; IDC reckons that this is due to "difficult annual comparisons in the segment".

As for vendors, the market leader, HP, saw its share of the market increase slightly to 25.4% ahead of the IBM (23.6%), Dell (16.6%), Oracle and Cisco (5.9% and 5.8% respectively).

IBM saw its revenue growth fall down by more than 10% and it is likely that this will accelerate because that it has sold its entry-level x86 server business unit to Lenovo.

Expect the Chinese manufacturer, whom I suspects accounts for a sizeable chunk of the "others" segment, to appear in the top 5 list. Another noteworthy titbit is the rate at which Cisco's revenue is growing, up by more than a third on a year-on-year basis.

ODM Direct sellers as well are enjoying some significant growth and, combined with the "other" vendors, now account for nearly 23% of the worldwide server system market, up from less than 20%.

Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.