FRAMINGHAM, MA – Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased 12.6% year-over-year to $23.6 billion during the fourth quarter of 2018, says International Data Corp. Worldwide server shipments increased 5% year-over-year to under 3 million units.

The overall server market continues to experience robust demand, with the fourth quarter marking the fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth and its highest total revenue in a single quarter ever, says IDC.

Volume server revenue increased 17.8% to $19 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 30.3% to $2.5 billion. High-end systems declined 28.3% to $2.1 billion.

"Reduced demand from hyperscale companies created downward pressure on worldwide server market growth rates during the quarter," said Sebastian Lagana, research manager, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "This was offset by increased server sales to enterprise customers and higher average selling prices. Enterprises are buying richly configured servers to support resource-intensive workloads, resulting in higher ASPs and pushing revenue growth higher than growth from unit shipments."

Tied for the number one position in the worldwide server market during the quarter were Dell, at 18.7% revenue share, and HPE/New H3C Group, with 17.8% revenue share, growing 20.4% and 10.5% year-over-year, respectively.

IBM was the third-ranked server supplier during the quarter, capturing 8.3% of total server revenues. IBM's performance during the quarter excludes sales generated through the company's recently established partnership with Inspur Power Systems.

Inspur/Inspur Power Systems and Lenovo tied for fourth, with revenue shares of 6.6% and 6.2%, respectively. Inspur/Inspur Power Systems increased its revenue 70.7% year-over-year, and Lenovo increased its revenue 33.8% year-over-year. The ODM Direct group of vendors accounted for 20.1% of total revenue, up 11.6% to $4.7 billion.

Dell led the worldwide server market in terms of unit shipments, accounting for 19.4% of all units shipped during the quarter.

On a geographic basis, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) was the fastest growing region in the fourth quarter, with 25.5% year-over-year revenue growth. Latin America grew 15.4%, while the EMEA region grew 15.2% on aggregate. Japan grew 5.3%; the US grew 5.1%, and Canada declined 5.7%. China saw its revenues grow 30.7%.

Demand for x86 servers increased 18.7% in the quarter to $21.1 billion in revenue. Non-x86 servers contracted 21.6% to $2.5 billion.

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