RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – IBM and Lenovo both made substantial gains in server sales and marketshare, says a new report from research firm IDC.
Lenovo’s server business is based in RTP and is built around IBM’s former x86 business which Lenovo acuired in 2014.
IBM sales reflect higher-end server equipment.
Overall, businesses order more servers across the industry with sales climbing 15% year-over-year to more than $17 billion.
“The first quarter 2021 server market performance benefited from a comparison against the most difficult quarter of last year’s pandemic stricken year, but this fact doesn’t tell a complete story,” said Paul Maguranis, senior research analyst, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. “The considerable increase of server investments during the quarter were also buoyed by global economic tailwinds along with increased investments targeting the modernization of business applications, datacenter infrastructure, and IT operations.”
Lenovo revenues climbed 35% to more than $1.4 billion and its marketshare in revenue climbed to 6.9% from 5.7%.
IBM’s revenues jumped more than 29% to $1.1 billion, good for 5.3% marketshare, up from 4.6%.
In shipments, Lenovo shipped 10% more than in 2019’s Q1.
“Revenue generated from x86 servers increased 10.9% in 1Q21 to $18.7 billion,” IDC reported. “Non-x86 server revenue grew 23.0% year over year to $2.2 billion.”
Revenues
| Top 5 Companies, Worldwide Server Vendor Revenue, Market Share, and Growth, First Quarter of 2021 (Revenues are in US$ Millions) | |||||
| Company | 1Q21 Revenue | 1Q21 Market Share | 1Q20 Revenue | 1Q20 Market Share | 1Q21/1Q20 Revenue Growth |
| 1. Dell Technologies | $3,556.3 | 17.0% | $3,473.7 | 18.6% | 2.4% |
| 2. HPE/H3C(a) | $3,324.9 | 15.9% | $2,891.3 | 15.5% | 15.0% |
| T3. Inspur/Inspur Power Systems(b)* | $1,507.7 | 7.2% | $1,374.5 | 7.4% | 9.7% |
| T3. Lenovo* | $1,435.4 | 6.9% | $1,063.9 | 5.7% | 34.9% |
| 4. IBM | $1,110.5 | 5.3% | $860.1 | 4.6% | 29.1% |
| ODM Direct | $5,488.7 | 26.3% | $4,826.4 | 25.9% | 13.7% |
| Rest of Market | $4,476.0 | 21.4% | $4,167.9 | 22.3% | 7.4% |
| Total | $20,899.4 | 100.0% | $18,657.7 | 100.0% | 12.0% |
| Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, June 10, 2021 | |||||
Units shipped
| Top 5 Companies, Worldwide Server Unit Shipments, Market Share, and Growth, First Quarter of 2021 | |||||
| Company | 1Q21 Unit Shipments | 1Q21 Market Share | 1Q20 Unit Shipments | 1Q20 Market Share | 1Q21/1Q20 Unit Growth |
| 1. Dell Technologies | 488,981 | 17.5% | 474,011 | 18.4% | 3.2% |
| 2. HPE/H3C(a) | 405,190 | 14.5% | 377,544 | 14.6% | 7.3% |
| 3. Inspur/Inspur Power Systems(b) | 222,596 | 8.0% | 216,896 | 8.4% | 2.6% |
| 4. Lenovo | 169,467 | 6.1% | 154,415 | 6.0% | 9.7% |
| T5. Super Micro* | 128,558 | 4.6% | 131,989 | 5.1% | -2.6% |
| T5. Huawei* | 116,606 | 4.2% | 100,035 | 3.9% | 16.6% |
| ODM Direct | 887,520 | 31.7% | 770,466 | 29.8% | 15.2% |
| Rest of Market | 377,236 | 13.5% | 356,689 | 13.8% | 5.8% |
| Total | 2,796,154 | 100.0% | 2,582,044 | 100.0% | 8.3% |
| Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, June 10, 2021 | |||||
