HP leads the way as worldwide server shipments nudge ahead

In the second quarter of 2014, worldwide server shipments grew 1.3 percent year-over-year, while revenue moved upward 2.8 percent from the second quarter of 2013, according to Gartner findings.

"The second quarter of 2014 produced relatively weak growth on a global level, with mixed results by platform," says Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president, Gartner.

"All regions showed growth in both shipments and vendor revenue except for Eastern Europe, Japan and Latin America.”

Eastern Europe fell 5.6 percent in units and 1.6 percent in vendor revenue; Japan declined 4.3 percent in units and 2.5 percent in vendor revenue; and Latin America dropped 16.5 percent in units but managed to produce a vendor revenue increase of 6.7 percent for the quarter, highest among all regions.

The platform mix by region and geographic variations in economic conditions are the main reasons for these results.

Overall, Middle East and Africa posted the highest shipment growth with a 6 percent increase, while Asia/Pacific, North America and EMEA grew by 5 percent, 1.6 percent and 0.8 percent in the second quarter.

"x86 servers managed to produce an increase of 1.4 percent in units in the second quarter of 2014, and an 8.1 percent increase in revenue. RISC/Itanium Unix servers fell globally for the period, a 23.2 percent decline in revenue and 7.9 percent decrease in shipments compared with the same quarter last year," Hewitt adds.

"The 'other' CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a decline in vendor revenue of 2.2 percent."

HP was the worldwide server market leader, based on revenue in the second quarter of 2014. The company posted nearly $3.2 billion in server revenue to account for 25.1 percent of worldwide server revenue.