IDC Shows HP As the Server Leader for Q1 2011

(UPDATED) - IDC came out with their 1Q 2011 Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker identifying market revenue leaders on May 24, 2011.  The report showed HP as the lead vendor with a 31.5% market share and 10.8% year over year growth.  IBM came in a close 2nd at 29.2% and Dell rounded out the top 3, at 15.6% market share.  According to the IDC press release, factory revenues in the server worldwide market increased 12.1% from Q1 2010 to Q1 2011 signaling increased market demand for servers around the world.  Total server unit shipments increased from Q1 2010 to 2.5% (1.9 million units), which is the second higheest quarterly total ever reported in the first calendar quarter of any year.  The IDC report shows that volume systems experience an 8.7% growth compared to Q1 2010 while midrange systems experienced a sharp 28.3% increase.  The high-end enterprise segment had an increase of 14.2% compared to a year ago showing a signficant sign of a turn of the economy, as this is the first time in eight quarters that all 3 server segments experienced positive growth in the same quarter.

IDC Group Vice President for Enterprise Platforms at IDC commented, “This is evidence that heterogeneous systems remain critically important to customers addressing a wide range of workload needs in their datacenters. As we moved into 2011, IDC predicted the technology refresh cycle would extend from volume- to value-oriented systems with somewhat longer planning horizons, and this is clearly happening.”

Other IDC Findings Include:

• The market for non-x86 servers, including servers based on RISC, EPIC (Itanium-based), and CISC processors, increased 12.3% year over year to $4.0 billion in 1Q11. This is the second consecutive quarter in which non-x86 servers have exhibited positive growth and the first time in two years that non-x86 based system revenue has grown faster than the market overall. Growth in non-x86 server revenue was driven by improved demand for Unix servers and IBM System z platforms.
• Unix servers experienced the first quarter showing year-on-year factory revenue improvement in 11 quarters, growing 12.5% when compared to 1Q10. IBM, HP, and Oracle all experienced improvement in Unix server revenue in the quarter, as worldwide Unix revenues were $2.6 billion, representing 21.8% of quarterly server revenue.
• IBM’s System z servers running z/OS experienced the third consecutive quarter of positive revenue growth, with 41.1% year-over-year growth in 1Q11 to $1.0 billion, representing 8.8% of quarterly server revenue worldwide. This was the third consecutive quarter that z/OS system revenue exceeded $1 billion.
• Linux server demand increased for the sixth consecutive quarter in 1Q11, with revenue growing 16.6% to $2.0 billion when compared with the first quarter of 2010. Linux servers now represent 16.9% of all server revenue, up 0.7 points over 1Q10.
• Microsoft Windows server demand also continued to show strong demand as Windows-based hardware revenue increased 10.1% year-over-year. Quarterly revenue of $5.8 billion for Windows servers represented 48.5% of overall quarterly factory revenue and 75.2% of all quarterly server shipments.

(UPDATED 5.25.11 at 2:53 pm. EST) As a final note  – this IDC report is the first report to include data from Cisco’s server revenues.  According to IDC, “Cisco maintained 1.6% factory revenue share overall, with particular strength in x86-based blades in North America.”

For details on the success of blade servers in Q1 2011, head over to http://bladesmadesimple.com/2011/05/q1-2011-idc-worldwide-server-market-shows-blade-server-leader-as/

For the full IDC report covering the Q1 2011 Worldwide Server Market, please visit IDC’s website at http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22841411.