IT Research

Hyperscale Demand Helps Servers See Mild Growth in 2015

• By Leila Meyer
• 06/02/15

Worldwide server shipments grew 13 percent and revenue 17.9 percent in the first quarter of 2015 compared to the first quarter of 2014, according to the information technology research and advisory company Gartner.

The reason for the growth is strong demand from the hyperscale server market in North America, according to Gartner. Because of the strong American dollar, server sales and shipments in that region were enough to offset declines in Latin America and Japan and minimal growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The first quarter of 2015 saw the "strongest shipment growth since the third quarter of 2010" and "the second-largest-volume quarter ever," said Adrian O'Connell, research director at Gartner, in a prepared statement.

Server shipments and revenue by CPU type:

• x86 server shipments increased by 13.2 percent and revenue increased by 14.5 percent compared to the first quarter of 2014;
• RISC/Itanium Unix server shipments declined by 2.9 percent and revenue declined by 3.1 percent; and
• Other types of servers, particularly mainframes, increased revenue by 95.1 percent.

HP was the world leader in the server market based on both number of shipments and revenue. The company held 23.8 percent of the server market based on revenue and 20 percent based on shipments, although it saw no growth in its percentage of market share based on shipments.

Lenovo experienced the largest growth rate in terms of both shipments and revenue, with 239.2 percent growth in shipments and 658.2 percent growth in revenue compared to the first quarter of 2014.

The top 5 ranking companies for worldwide server shipments were:

1. HP
2. Dell
3. Lenovo
4. Huawei
5. Inspur Electronics.

The top 5 for worldwide server revenues were:

1. HP
2. Dell
3. IBM
4. Lenovo
5. Cisco.

According to Gartner, "all of the top five global vendors had revenue increases for the first quarter of 2015 except IBM."