Gartner Says Worldwide Server Shipments Grew 13% in First Quarter of 2015 

In the first quarter of 2015, worldwide server shipments grew 13 per cent year over year, while revenue increased 17.9 per cent from the first quarter of 2014, according to Gartner, Inc.

“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,” said 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 US dollar. The strength in North America was strong enough to offset declines in Latin America and Japan. Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) was nearly flat, with 1 per cent volume growth.”

“x86 server shipments increased 13.2 per cent from the first quarter of 2014, and revenue increased 14.5 per cent. RISC/Itanium Unix server shipments declined 2.9 per cent, while revenue declined 3.1 per cent compared with the same quarter last year. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed an increase of 95.1 per cent in terms of revenue,” said Mr. O’Connell.

HP maintained its No. 1 ranking in the worldwide server market based on revenue with 23.8 per cent market share in the first quarter of 2015. Lenovo experienced the largest increase in the first quarter of 2015 with 658.2 per cent growth. All of the top five global vendors had revenue increases for the first quarter of 2015 except IBM.

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the first quarter of 2015, but growth was flat. HP’s worldwide server shipment share was 20 per cent, representing a drop of 2.6 percentage points in share from the same quarter in 2014. All of the top five vendors experienced shipment increases in the first quarter of 2015, with Lenovo producing the largest growth rate of 239.2 per cent.

In the first quarter of 2015, the regions with the highest growth rates in terms of unit shipments were North America (22.9 per cent), the Middle East and Africa (20.8 per cent), and Asia/Pacific (13.6 per cent).

In EMEA, server shipments in the first quarter of 2015 grew 1.1 per cent, while server revenue grew 6.6 per cent, totalling $3.2 billion.

“After a challenging 2014, the first quarter of 2015 marked a positive, if slightly tepid, start to the year for the server market in EMEA,” said Mr. O’Connell. “There are many positive drivers in the market including cloud-enablement, digital business and installed-base refresh, but the reality is that we are not seeing significant budget increases. In that context, and particularly with exchange rate pressures leading to price increases, a 6.6 per cent revenue growth rate is a strong result for the market.”

In the first quarter of 2015, HP lost 2.5 percentage points in share in EMEA, as its revenue declined 0.6 per cent. Despite positive results in many countries, HP’s results were hit hard by very weak demand in Russia, which saw revenue decline by more than 60 per cent compared to the first quarter in 2014.

Dell maintained the second spot in EMEA this quarter, increasing its revenue share to 17 per cent. Dell executed well across the region and benefited from the challenges that IBM and Lenovo faced following the acquisition of IBM’s x86 server business by Lenovo. Following its acquisition Lenovo rose to fourth-ranked vendor in EMEA, albeit with a volume decline of 4.8 per cent in comparison to combined IBM / Lenovo x86 shipments last year.

“The market is showing positive signs, although the currency impact, as well as regional weakness in countries like Russia continue to make EMEA a challenging region to do business in during 2015,” said Mr. O’Connell. “The outlook is for shipment growth for the full year, but this will be a fiercely competitive environment for all of the vendors.”

Additional information is available to subscribers of the Gartner Servers Quarterly Statistics Worldwide program. This programme provides worldwide market size and share data by vendor revenue and unit shipments. Segments include: region, vendor, vendor brand, sub brand, CPU type, CPU group, max CPU, platform, price band, operating system and distribution channel.