In the third quarter of 2017, worldwide server revenue increased 16 percent year over year, while shipments grew 5.1 percent from the second quarter of 2016, according to Gartner, Inc.
“The third quarter of 2017 produced continued growth on a global level with varying regional results,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. “A build-out of infrastructure to support cloud and hybrid-cloud implementations was the main driver for growth in the server market for the period.”
“x86 servers increased 5.3 percent in shipments for the year and 16.7 percent in revenue in the third quarter of 2017. RISC/Itanium Unix servers declined globally, down 23.5 percent in shipments and 18.3 percent in vendor revenue compared with the same quarter last year. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a decline/increase of 54.5 percent,” Mr. Hewitt said.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) continued to lead in the worldwide server market based on revenue. Despite a decline of 3.2 percent, the company posted $3.1 billion in revenue for a total share of 21 percent for the third quarter of 2017 (see Table 1). Dell EMC maintained the No. 2 position with 37.9 percent growth and 20.8 percent market share. Inspur Electronics experienced the highest growth in the quarter with 116.6 percent, driven by ongoing sales into China-based cloud providers, as well as global expansion efforts.
Table 1
Worldwide: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 3Q17 (U.S. Dollars)
| Company | 3Q17
Revenue |
3Q17 Market Share (%) | 3Q16
Revenue |
3Q16 Market Share (%) | 3Q17-3Q16 Growth (%) |
| HPE | 3,144,197,027 | 21.3 | 3,247,173,253 | 25.5 | -3.2 |
| Dell EMC | 3,070,405,586 | 20.8 | 2,227,185,685 | 17.5 | 37.9 |
| IBM | 1,130,618,441 | 7.7 | 889,723,595 | 7.0 | 27.1 |
| Inspur Electronics | 1,085,706,835 | 7.4 | 501,144,279 | 3.9 | 116.6 |
| Cisco | 996,248,000 | 6.8 | 929,440,000 | 7.3 | 7.2 |
| Others | 5,317,865,262 | 36.1 | 4,920,169,892 | 38.7 | 8.1 |
| Total | 14,745,041,151 | 100.0 | 12,714,836,704 | 100.0 | 16.0 |
Source: Gartner (December 2017)
In server shipments, Dell EMC maintained the No. 1 position in the third quarter of 2017 with 17.8 percent market share (see Table 2). HPE secured the second spot with 16.4 percent of the market. Inspur Electronics was the only vendor in the top five to experience positive growth in the quarter.
Table 2
Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipments Estimates, 3Q17 (Units)
| Company | 3Q17
Shipments |
3Q17 Market Share (%) | 3Q16
Shipments |
3Q16 Market Share (%) | 3Q17-3Q16 Growth (%) |
| Dell EMC | 502,845 | 17.8 | 452,383 | 16.8 | 11.2 |
| HPE | 462,777 | 16.4 | 492,273 | 18.3 | -6.2 |
| Inspur Electronics | 203,306 | 7.2 | 119,943 | 4.5 | 69.5 |
| Lenovo | 151,575 | 5.4 | 228,097 | 8.5 | -33.5 |
| Huawei | 145,441 | 5.1 | 163,355 | 6.1 | -11.0 |
| Others | 1,362,727 | 48.2 | 1,234,567 | 45.9 | 10.4 |
| Total | 2,828,617 | 100.0 | 2,691,618 | 100.0 | 5.1 |
Source: Gartner (November 2017)
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, subbrand, CPU type, CPU group, max CPU, platform, price band, operating systems and distribution channels.
