HPE, Dell and IBM losing ground to ODMs

Rising market share of 'Others' category demonstrates growth of hyperscale datacentres, says Gartner

Asian ODMs such as Quanta and Wistron are continuing to bite out a larger share of the global server market, according to Gartner's latest figures.

Everyone besides HPE enjoyed growth as the global server market grew 8.2 per cent in shipments and 9.2 per cent in revenues in Q4 on an annual comparison.

But none of the top players could match the expansion rate of Gartner's 'Others' category, a collection of unspecified players sitting outside the top five. This includes Quanta and Wistron, two Taiwanese ODMs that have found success selling their boxes into hyperscale datacentres from the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

Those outside the top five saw revenues beef up 18.9 per cent to $4.75bn (£3.35bn) and shipments swell 16 per cent to 1.26 million in Q4.

This means they have now captured 31.4 and 42.5 per cent of the market in revenue and shipment terms, respectively.

"This demonstrates that the growth of hyperscale datacentres, like those of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, continues to be the leading contributor to physical server increases globally," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner.

This backs up the views of rival market watcher Dell'Oro, which told CRN last year it estimated that Asian ODMs such as Quanta and Wistron had snatched 10 per cent of server revenues and 15 per cent of server shipments.

However, Gartner has warned in the past that further advances by the ODMs could be hampered by their lack of channel experience.

Market leader HPE's shipments were hit by global weakness in Windows-based x86 servers, while its revenues were affected by a drop in RISC/Itanium Unix server sales, Gartner said.

Despite HPE's share of server revenues dropping from 27.9 to 25.2 per cent, the newly demerged company remains more than 10 points ahead of closest rival Dell, which grew revenues 4.5 per cent. IBM grew revenues 10.3 per cent, Lenovo 2.9 per cent and Cisco 20.2 per cent.

Breaking it down by geography, the Asia-Pac market was the star of the show with 20.1 per cent unit shipment growth. North America and western Europe grew 8.5 and 4.3 per cent on the same basis, Gartner said.