STAMFORD, CT -- Third-quarter worldwide server shipments grew 9.2% year-over-year, while vendor revenue increased 7.5% during the period.

"The third quarter of 2015 produced growth on a global level with mixed results by region," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "All regions showed growth in both shipments and vendor revenue, except for Eastern Europe, Japan and Latin America, which posted revenue declines of 5.8%, 11.7% and 24.2%, respectively, for the period. Currency exchange rates are one of the main reasons for the disparity in regional server market performance."

From a regional standpoint, Asia/Pacific grew the most in shipments, up 23.8% for the period. The region also posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 25.4% for the period.

HP continued to lead the worldwide server market based on revenue (Table 1). The company posted just over $3.7 billion in server vendor revenue for a total market share of 27.3% for the quarter.

Table 1. Worldwide Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 3Q15 (US dollars)

Source: Gartner (December 2015)

All the top five global vendors had revenue increases for the third quarter of 2015, except for IBM with a decline of 42.8%. IBM’s decline is due primarily to its sale of its x86 server business to Lenovo. Beyond that, IBM’s server revenue fell 3.1% for the RISC segment, but grew 15% for mainframes to post a 5.1% total growth in the quarter for the server businesses that it retained.

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the quarter with a year-over-year shipment increase of 7.7% (Table 2). HP's worldwide server shipment market share was 22.2%, virtually the same share as in the third quarter of 2014. All the top five vendors in server shipments worldwide produced shipment increases in the third quarter of 2015, with Lenovo recording the largest growth of 183.2%.

Table 2. Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipments Estimates, 3Q15 (units)

Source: Gartner (December 2015)

Hewitt said, "x86 servers managed to produce an increase with growth of 9.2% in shipments and 9.7% in revenue year over year. RISC/Itanium Unix server revenue declined 11.5% in the third quarter, while shipments grew 1.1%. The "other" CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed an increase of 3.5% in terms of revenue."

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