HP forges ahead as EMEA server market price war hots up
US giant bolsters lead in mixed Q3 for EMEA market
HP stretched its lead as EMEA's biggest server vendor in Q3, in a quarter characterised by increasingly fierce price competition, according to IDC figures.
For the three months to the end of September, the worth of the EMEA server market declined three per cent annually, and 6.3 per cent sequentially to $2.85bn (£1.74bn). Quarterly shipments came in at 535,767, which represents an increase of 1.3 per cent on the prior quarter, but a decline of 4.9 per cent on a year-on-year basis.
The declines in revenue were less keenly felt in western Europe, claimed IDC, despite shipments dropping 7.4 per cent. The region contributed $1.7bn in sales, equating to 80.5 per cent of the EMEA total.
Revenue market leader HP was the only one of EMEA's five biggest server manufacturers to grow in Q3 2013. The US giant increased EMEA sales by one per cent annually to $1.09bn, while its market share has also increased from 37 to 38.5 per cent in the last 12 months.
Second-placed IBM was the market's laggard during the quarter, with revenue plummeting 17.4 per cent year on year to $774.9m. Big Blue's share of the market has dropped almost four points in the last year to 22.5 per cent.
Dell and Fujitsu remained fairly stable at numbers three and four in the vendor league table, after posting declines of 5.8 and 1.8 per cent, respectively. The Texan firm holds a 14.6 per cent market share, some way ahead of its Japanese rival on 5.6 per cent. Oracle completed the top five, but lost ground as its sales dropped 14.3 per cent annually to $161.4m in Q3, giving it a market share of 4.9 per cent.
Andreas Olah, research analyst, Enterprise Server Group, IDC EMEA, said: "In western Europe demand was strong particularly in the Nordics due to mega-datacenter expansion by global cloud providers and social networks. Switzerland and the Netherlands saw moderate rises in shipments while the major markets of Germany, France, the UK, and Ireland saw declines in volumes.
"Despite these drops in shipments, France and Ireland managed to achieve flat to moderate revenue growth in contrast to the declines experienced in Germany and the UK."