Gartner Says Worldwide Server Shipment Market Grew 8 Percent in the Second Quarter of 2015, While Revenue Increased 7.2 Percent

STAMFORD, Conn. -- August 26, 2015 -- In the second quarter of 2015, worldwide server shipments grew 8.0 percent year over year, while revenue increased 7.2 percent from the first quarter of 2014, according to Gartner, Inc.

"The second quarter year-over-year growth for 2015 slowed compared with the annual growth of the first quarter of the year," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "Currency exchange rate changes have started to show their impact by reducing relative spending power in regions like Western Europe. It is likely that in anticipation of further currency rate shifts that some organizations utilized their budgets earlier in the year rather than waiting until the third or fourth quarters when their purchasing power may be further reduced by these relative currency changes.

"x86 server shipments increased 8.3 percent in the second quarter of 2015 and revenue grew 9 percent. RISC/Itanium Unix server shipments declined 18.7 percent globally for the period, while RISC/Itanium revenue declined 9.7 percent compared with the same quarter last year. The 'other' CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed an increase of 7.8 percent," Mr. Hewitt said.

From the regional standpoint, North America grew the most significantly in shipments with a 14.8 percent increase. The region also posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 14.7 percent for the period.

HP maintained its No. 1 ranking in the worldwide server market based on revenue with a 25.2 percent market share (see Table 1). Lenovo experienced the largest increase in the second quarter of 2015 with 526.5 percent growth in revenue. All of the top five global vendors had revenue increases for the second quarter of 2015 except IBM.

Table 1
Worldwide: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 2Q15 (U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner Dataquest (August 2015)

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the second quarter of 2015 (see Table 2) with a year-over-year shipment increase of 2.5 percent. HP's worldwide server shipment share was 21.7 percent, representing a 1.2 percent drop in share from the same quarter in 2014.

Of the top five vendors in server shipments worldwide, all produced shipment increases except for Dell.

Table 2
Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipments Estimates, 2Q15 (Units)

Source: Gartner Dataquest (August 2015)

Additional information is available to subscribers of the Gartner Servers Quarterly Statistics Worldwide program. This program 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 systems and distribution channels.

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