The strong Q4 number show continued major gains in the server market, marking the fifth-straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth, and its highest single-quarter ever. IDC said volume server revenue increased 17.8% in Q4 to $19.0 billion, midrange server revenue jumped 30.3% to $2.5 billion, and high-end systems sunk 28.3% to $2.1 billion.
"Reduced demand from hyperscale companies created downward pressure on worldwide server market growth rates during the quarter," said Sebastian Lagana, research manager, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "This was offset by increased server sales to enterprise customers and higher average selling prices (ASPs). Enterprises are buying richly configured servers to support resource-intensive workloads, resulting in higher ASPs and pushing revenue growth higher than growth from unit shipments."
Looking at which companies sold and moved the most servers in Q4, Dell Inc. was No. 1 with 18.7% revenue share, growing 20.4% YoY. HPE/New H3C Group was second at 17.8% revenue share and grew 10.5% YoY, and IBM was third with 8.3% of total server revenue share. Inspur/Inspur Power Systems and Lenovo were fourth and fifth with revenue shares of 6.6% and 6.2%, respectively. The ODM Direct group of vendors had 23.3% of global market share in Q4, growing sales 11.6% YoY.
Dell also led the worldwide server market in unit shipments, accounting for 19.4% of all units shipped during Q4. HPE/New H3C Group was second at 15.8% of units shipped, while Inspur (8.3%), Hauwei (7.1%), and Lenovo (6.4%) rounded out the top five individual vendors. The ODM Direct group accounted for 23.3% of server units shipped.
