HPE only major vendor to enjoy server sales jump in Q1 - Gartner

Global server revenue down 2.3 per cent in first quarter

HPE was the only one of the top-five vendors to see its server revenue increase in the first quarter of this year, according to Gartner.

Global server revenue declined annually by 2.3 per cent in Q1 to $13bn (£9bn), but HPE saw an increase of 3.3 per cent, from $3.2bn to $3.3bn.

The revenue jump saw HPE increase its market share from 23.8 per cent to 25.2 per cent.

Although overall revenue fell, shipment estimates increased by 1.7 per cent compared with Q1 of 2015.

"The drop in revenues in light of shipment increases demonstrates that the servers that shipped during the period had lower average selling prices than those that shipped in the same time frame last year," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner.

"The real driver of global growth continues to be the hyperscale datacentre segment. The enterprise and small or mid-size business segments remain relatively flat as end users in these segments accommodated their increased application requirements through virtualisation and considered cloud alternatives."

IBM took the biggest hit of the major players, with revenue falling 32.7 per cent from $1.9bn to $1.3bn.

Major vendors HPE, Dell and Lenovo all saw their shipment numbers fall, but Huawei enjoyed a jump of 23.6 per cent in Q1 2015 to 130,755 in Q1 of this year.