Dell overtakes HPE in global server market

Revenue of top five vendors hit 'historic' $22.5bn in second quarter, according to IDC

Dell has become the biggest global server vendor for the first time with an 18.8 per cent market share, according to IDC.

The company was previously second to HPE in the second quarter of 2017, but saw a growth of 53 per cent year on year to $4.2bn (£3.2bn) in Q2 2018.

HPE saw its hold on the market shrink from 21.4 per cent in Q2 2017 to 16.6 per cent over the same period this year.

Sanjay Medvitz, senior research analyst of servers and storage at IDC, attributed the revenue growth to a market-wide enterprise refresh cycle and increasing demand from cloud service providers.

"Enterprises continue to invest in new infrastructure to support next-generation applications and achieve cloud-like benefits on-premise," he said.

"Hyperscalers also continue to update and expand their datacentre presence, benefiting OEM direct suppliers.

"Server revenue growth has also been driven by increasing average selling prices (ASPs). This is due to richer configurations, DRAM prices, and new processor platforms."

Vendor revenues in the global server market hit a record $22.5bn in the second quarter of this year, according to the analyst.

The number represents 43.7 per cent year-on-year growth over the same period last year.

IBM and Lenovo trail in joint third position, with Inspur, Cisco and Huawei rounding out the top five vendors in the server market.

Server shipments increased 20.5 per cent year on year to 2.9 million units in Q2 2018, according to IDC. Dell accounted for 19.5 per cent of all units shipped during the quarter.