FRAMINGHAM, MA – Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market declined 6.7% year-over-year to $22 billion during the third quarter, according to the International Data Corp., and worldwide server shipments declined 3% to 3.1 million units.

In terms of server class, volume server revenue was down 4% to $17.9 billion, while midrange server revenue declined 14.3% to $3 billion, and high-end systems contracted 23.7% to $1.1 billion.

"While the server market did indeed decline last quarter, next-generation workloads and advanced server innovation (e.g., accelerated computing, storage class memory, next generation I/O, etc.) keep demand for enterprise compute at near historic highs," said Paul Maguranis, senior research analyst, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "In fact, the third quarter of 2019 represented the second biggest quarter for global server unit shipments in more than 16 years, eclipsed only by the third quarter of 2018."

Dell and the combined HPE/New H3C Group ended the third quarter in a statistical tie for the number one position, with 17.2% and 16.8% revenue share, respectively. Revenue for Dell dropped 10.8% year-over-year, while HPE/New H3C Group was down 3.2%. The third ranking server company was Inspur/Inspur Power Systems, which captured 9% market share and grew revenues 15.3% year-over-year. Lenovo and Cisco ended the quarter tied for fifth, with 5.4% and 4.9% revenue share, respectively. Lenovo saw revenue decline 16.9%, and Cisco saw its revenue grow 3.1% year-over-year.

The ODM Direct group of vendors accounted for 26.4% of total revenue and declined 7.1% year-over-year to $5.82 billion. Dell led the worldwide server market in terms of unit shipments, accounting for 16.4% of all units shipped during the quarter.