In the third quarter of 2014, worldwide server shipments grew 1 percent year-over-year, while revenue moved upward 1.7 percent from the third quarter of 2013, according to Gartner, Inc.

"The third quarter of 2014 produced modest growth on a global level, highlighting positive but constrained demand," said Errol Rasit, research director at Gartner. "Only North America and Asia Pacific exhibited shipments growth, largely driven by demand from hyperscale organizations located there. These results support the continued bifurcation of enterprise and consumer services server demand."

The platform mix by region and geographic variations in economic conditions are the main reasons for these results. Asia/Pacific posted the highest shipment growth at 8.7 percent and 7.5 percent increase in revenue, while North America posted a more modest 0.7 percent in shipments and 2.6 percent increase in revenue. Western Europe saw a 2 percent shipments decrease, but a growth of 3.8 percent in revenue. Eastern Europe fell 10.8 percent in shipments and 6.3 percent in vendor revenue, and the Middle East and Africa posted a 5.2 percent shipments decrease and 6.7 percent decrease in revenue. Japan declined 6.7 percent in shipments and 10.6 percent in vendor revenue, and Latin America dropped 6.3 percent in shipments and 4.1 percent in vendor revenue for the quarter.

"x86 servers managed to grow 1.2 percent in units and 7.4 percent in revenue in the third quarter of 2014," said Mr. Rasit. "RISC/Itanium Unix server shipments declined 17.1 percent globally for the period and declined 8.0 percent in vendor revenue compared with the same quarter last year."

Despite a decline of 0.9 percent, HP was the worldwide server market leader based on revenue in the third quarter of 2014 (see Table 1). The company posted nearly $3.4 billion in server revenue to account for 26.9 percent of worldwide server revenue. Cisco experienced the highest growth in the third quarter with 30.8 percent.

Table 1
Worldwide: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 3Q14 (U.S. Dollars)

Company

3Q14

Revenue

3Q14 Market Share (%)

3Q13

Revenue

3Q13 Market Share (%)

3Q14-3Q13 Growth (%)

HP

3,374,559,864

26.9

3,404,811,159

27.6

-0.9

IBM

2,322,409,499

18.5

2,821,114,540

22.8

-17.7

Dell

2,219,989,943

17.7

2,025,411,030

16.4

9.6

Cisco

783,760,000

6.2

599,300,000

4.9

30.8

Oracle

500,400,000

4.0

500,438,000

4.1

0.0

Other Vendors

3,355,453,880

26.7

2,999,925,379

24.3

11.9

Total

12,556,573,186

100.0

12,351,100,107

100.0

1.7

Source: Gartner (December 2014)

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the third quarter of 2014 (see Table 2) despite a year-over-year shipment decline of 14.9 percent for the quarter. Of the top five vendors in server shipments worldwide, all produced shipment increases except for HP and IBM.

Table 2
Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipments Estimates, 3Q14 (Units)

Company

3Q14

Shipments

3Q14 Market Share (%)

3Q13

Shipments

3Q13 Market Share (%)

3Q14-3Q13 Growth (%)

HP

569,426

22.5

669,103

26.7

-14.9

Dell

490,752

19.4

484,607

19.3

1.3

IBM

171,419

6.8

201,777

8.1

-15.0

Huawei

93,421

3.7

69,573

2.8

34.3

Inspur Electronics

91,244

3.6

50,153

2.0

81.9

Other Vendors

1,114,616

44.0

1,031,098

41.1

8.1

Total

2,530,878

100.0

2,506,311

100.0

1.0

Source: Gartner (December 2014)

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, OSs and distribution channels.