RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Global sales of server surged nearly 20 percent in the third quarter of 2017 year-over-year, but Lenovo lost more ground in the battle for dollars as well as market share.
IBM, meanwhile, was a big winner.
Cisco also grew sales.
And Dell outshone all competitors with sales soaring nearly 38 percent.
No. 1 HP, however, experienced a slight 1.1 percent decline.
So says research firm International Data Corporation in a new report.
The news continued to show how Lenovo’s server business, which is based in RTP, continues to struggle despite management shakeups and new products.
According to IDC, Lenovo sales fell 12.6 percent to $861.2 year-over-year.
Its market share slipped as well, down to 5.1 percent from 7 percent, leaving Lenovo in fifth place.
IBM, which sold its low-end x86 server business to Lenovo but kept its high-end servers, helpd drive the global sales market up as companies bought more hyperscale gear.
“IBM has demonstrated that the enterprise still has space for non-x86 systems, growing the newly refreshed system z business by 63.8% year over year to $673 million,” said IDC’s Kuba Stolarski, research director for Computing Platforms.
Big hyperscale buyers included Amazon, Google and Facebook.
Dell, buoyed by its merger with EMC, grew sales 37.9 percent to just over $3 billion. Dell’s market share is now just 1.4 percentage points behind HPE.
Cisco ranks No. 4 behind IBM with sales up nearly 7 percent to $993 million. However, it still lost market share, down to 5.8 percent from 6.6 percent.
