The global server market has suffered through a bit of a rough patch so far in 2016, but there may be clearer skies ahead according to analyst firms IDC and Gartner.
IDC reported global server revenue of $13.4 billion in the second quarter, for a 0.4 percent year-over-year decline. In contrast, Gartner reported a 0.8 year-over-year decline on revenue of $13.6 billion.
While server revenues dipped, server shipments actually grew. IDC reported that 2.4 million servers shipped in the second quarter for a 2.6 percent yearly gain. Gartner reported a two percent gain in shipments to 2.8 million servers.
“All regions showed a decline in shipments except Asia/Pacific and North America, which posted growth of 5.6 percent and 3 percent, respectively,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement. “In terms of revenue, all regions except for Asia/Pacific and Eastern Europe exhibited a decline.”
HPE Still Top Server Vendor, Followed by Dell
In terms of vendors, both IDC and Gartner have Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in first place by revenue, followed by Dell in second. Not surprisingly, x86 server revenues and shipments are growing, while non-x86 revenues continue to slide.
According to IDC, x86 server revenues in 2Q16 were $11.6 billion, for a 7.3 percent year-over-year gain. In contrast, non-X86 server revenue was reported at $1.9 billion, for a 31.1 percent year-over-year decline.
“The server market is progressing exactly as expected, with close to flat growth in the second quarter, following a difficult first quarter, but growth in volume servers is still healthy, which is a good sign for the market moving forward,” Kuba Stolarski, research director, Computing Platforms at IDC, said in a statement.
“As we prepare for the second half of 2016, expect to see market growth led by cloud datacenter buildouts from key hyperscalers,” Stolarski continued.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at ServerWatch and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist