**Note: Due to the existing joint venture between HPE and the New H3C Group, IDC will be reporting external market share on a global level for HPE as "HPE/New H3C Group" starting from 2Q 2016 and going forward.
In addition to the table above, an interactive graphic showing worldwide market share (based on revenue) for the top 5 server vendors over the previous five quarters is available here. The chart is intended for public use in online news articles and social media. Instructions on how to embed this graphic can be found by viewing this press release on IDC.com.
"Other than Dell, which remained relatively flat, all top worldwide vendors experienced global revenue declines year over year," said Lloyd Cohen, research director, Computing Platforms at IDC. "Just outside of the top 5, Huawei, ranked number six, grew 73.6% year over year. On a positive note for the overall market, average system values increased 9.0% sequentially, growing in all three server classes: volume servers, midrange enterprise and high-end enterprise, as users are increasing their storage and memory capabilities, driven by workload requirements for key workloads like data analytics."
Top Server Market Findings
Regionally, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ) and Japan experienced the only positive revenue growth with 4Q16 year-over-year increases of 8.1% and 3.3%, respectively. These were the same two regions that experienced the only positive growth in 3Q16 as well. Within APeJ, China drove overall growth by increasing its revenue 18.8% to $2.7 billion. All other regions continued to decline. Latin America experienced a relatively small decline of 1.1%. The United States declined 7.6% year over year. Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) declined 12.9%, with all sub-regions in decline: Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) declined 25.0%, Western Europe declined 11.8%, and Middle East and Africa (MEA) declined 7.5%. Canada declined by 15.1% year over year. Of all regions, the U.S. remains the largest regional market with 39.2% of worldwide server vendor revenue.
Demand for x86 servers weakened in 4Q16 with revenues decreasing 1.9% year over year in the quarter to $12.2 billion worldwide, while unit shipments decreased 3.3% to 2.53 million servers. x86 average selling prices (ASPs) increased by 1.5% year over year and 2.4% sequentially. HPE led the x86 server market with 26.5% revenue share based on a year-over-year decline of 13.0% in x86 revenue. Dell Technologies retained second place, securing 21.1% revenue share following a 0.1% year-over-year revenue increase. Dell Technologies and HPE were statistically tied for first place in x86 unit share in 4Q16 with 21.0% and 20.5%, respectively.
Non-x86 servers experienced a revenue decline of 16.7% year over year to $2.4 billion, representing 16.2% of quarterly server revenue. IBM leads the segment with 75.4% revenue share despite a 17.1% year-over-year revenue decline. IDC also continued to track minimal revenue from ARM-based server sales in 4Q16; ARM sales have yet to make an impact on the server market.
IDC's Server Taxonomy
IDC's Server Taxonomy maps the eleven price bands within the server market into three price ranges: volume servers, midrange servers and high-end servers. The revenue data presented in this release is stated as vendor revenue for a server system. IDC presents data in vendor revenue to determine market share position. Vendor revenue represents those dollars recognized by multi-user system and server vendors for ISS (initial server shipment) and upgrade units sold through direct and indirect channels and includes the following embedded server components: Frame or cabinet and all cables, processors, memory, communications boards, operating system software, other bundled software and initial internal and external disk shipments.
IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the global server market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly unit shipments and revenues (both vendor revenue and value of shipments), segmented by vendor, family, model, region, operating system, price band, CPU type, and architecture. For more information, please contact Lidice Fernandez at 305-351-3051 or lfernandez@idc.com.
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