Global server revenue declined 4.5% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2017, while shipments fell 4.2%, according to analyst Gartner.
"The first quarter of 2017 showed declines on a global level with a slight variation in results by region," said Jeffrey Hewitt, an analyst at Gartner. "Asia/Pacific bucked the trend and posted growth while all other regions fell.
"Although purchases in the hyper-scale data centre segment have been increasing, the enterprise and SMB segments remain constrained as end users in these segments accommodate their increased application requirements through virtualisation and consider cloud alternatives."
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) continued to lead in the worldwide server market based on revenue. The company posted just over $3bn in revenue for a total share of 24.1% in the first quarter of 2017. Dell EMC maintained the number two position with 19% market share. Dell EMC was actually the only vendor in the top five to experience growth in the first quarter.
These two were followed by IBM, Cisco and Lenovo. In server shipments, Dell EMC secured the Number one position with 17.9% market. The company had a slight increase of 0.5% growth over the first quarter of 2016. Despite a decline of 16.7%, HPE secured the second spot with 16.8%. They were followed by Huawei, Lenovo and Inspur Electronics. Inspur experienced the highest growth in shipments - up 27.3%.