Led by strong growth in China, the worldwide server market grew 5.2 percent to $15.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015, reported market watcher IDC this week. It was the seventh consecutive quarterly (year over year) growth. Notably the high-end of the server market, typically used in the HPC world, actually fell slightly (2.3 percent) to $2.3 billion.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) again led all suppliers with 24.9 percent market share (revenue) despite a 2.1 percent year-over-year revenue decline to $3.8 billion. IDC says HPE experienced slower demand for its x86-based ProLiant servers, particularly in Canada, Japan, and Latin America.
The top four Chinese OEMs – Inspur, Huawei, Lenovo, and Sugon – grew their combined revenues by 19.5 percent on a year-over-year basis as growth in their home China market outpaced the rest of Asia Pacific to reach $2.3 billion in quarterly factory revenue.
Of note in the battle by non-x86 processors gain market share, IDC reports that IBM experienced strong growth for POWER Systems and double-digit growth for its z System mainframes in the quarter, while ARM server sales fell in 4Q15 compared to the same time in 2014, with HPE Moonshot system deployments representing the largest single component.
Here is an excerpt from the IDC report highlights:
“Regionally, Asia/Pacific (AP) experienced the sharpest revenue growth with a year-over-year increase of 14.7% in 4Q15. Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the United States also experienced positive year-over-year growth of 5.0% and 7.9%, respectively. China once again exhibited significant growth with year-over-year revenue up 15.6% to $2.3 billion.
“Demand for x86 servers improved in 4Q15 with revenues increasing 8.0% year over year in the quarter to $12.5 billion worldwide as unit shipments increased 4.0% to 2.6 million servers. HPE led the market with 29.0% revenue share based on flat revenue growth over 4Q13. Dell retained second place, securing a 20.5% revenue share following 5.3% year-over-year revenue growth.
“Non-x86 servers experienced a revenue decline of -5.4% year over year to $2.9 billion, representing 18.6% of quarterly server revenue. IBM leads the segment with 75.8% revenue share on the back of a year-over-year revenue increase of 8.9% when compared with the fourth quarter of 2014.”
IDC’s full press release can be read at http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41076116.