HP, Dell and Lenovo lead 'disappointing' workstations market

Certified mobile workstations continue to show strong growth, while the desktop workstations market continues to decline, according to IDC.

Total shipments of mobile workstations improved 5.4% year over year to 288,270 units in 2Q15.

Worldwide desktop workstation shipments declined -3.7% year over year with total shipments of 641,580 units.

Overall, worldwide shipments improved slightly with a year-over-year decline of -1.0% compared to a year-over-year decline of -1.6% in the first quarter of 2015.

The Asia/Pacific region (including Japan) accounted for 24.7% of the worldwide market in 2Q15.

Excluding Japan, Asia/Pacific had the fastest year-over-year growth of any region at 11.5%, its seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

"Despite the disappointing second quarter results, the market is expected to continue growing as high-end PC users and Apple Mac Pro users migrate to workstations," says Ebenezer Obeng-Nyarkoh, IDC Worldwide Trackers Group senior research analyst.

"As IT professionals continue to increase demand for high performance computing, graphic capabilities, and greater reliability, ISV-certified workstations are expected to move into the computing mainstream."

Surprisingly, cyclical growth improved for all major players of certified desktop workstations, which includes all-in-ones, blade, rack, and tower workstations, says IDC.

While Dell, Fujitsu, and NEC had notable year-over-year gains in 2Q15, all vendors saw their growth plummet compared to the previous quarter, IDC says.

HP remained the leading vendor in the desktop workstation market accounting for 43.1% of the market, despite a decline of -9.3% year over year and -0.6% sequentially.

This was HP's fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline and it ended the quarter with a net loss of -3.6 and -2.7 share points sequentially and year over year, respectively.

Dell remained the number two desktop workstation vendor gaining back shares after net loss of shares in the first quarter.

Dell's shipments fell -2.6% year over year in 2Q15, its third consecutive quarter of declining shipments. Dell accounted for 37.9% of the global market, with a net gain of 0.4 points of share compared to a year ago and 2.6 points sequentially.

Lenovo was the only vendor ending the quarter with positive growth and it continued to outperform the overall market with its seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

With a year-over-year gain of 2.4 share point, Lenovo ended the quarter with 13.2% market share and maintained the number 3 spot.

Other vendors accounting for the remaining 5.8% share of the desktop market posted a net loss of -1.0 share points sequentially.

Notable among the other vendors were Fujitsu and NEC, which together declined -4.6% year-over-year.