IDC estimates global server sales rose 2.5% Y/Y in Q2 to $12.6bn. That marks a turnaround from the 2.2% drop seen in Q1, and the 4.4% drop seen in Q4. ear or year, teh volume systems saw a 4.9% revenue growth.
Gartner estimates also sales grew 2.8%. IDC declares the server market, hurt in recent quarters by system consolidation and a shift in demand towards the white-label gear used by web and hosting giants, is seeing "the beginning of a cyclical refresh cycle." It sees the pending launch of Intel's new Grantley Xeon CPUs, along with Microsoft's plans to end Windows Server 2003 support, lifting sales into 2015.
Sales of x86 servers (mostly Intel-based) rose 7.8% in Q2, and now make up 78% of industry revenue. Non-x86 server sales fell 12.8%. Market leader HP's share rose 40 bps Y/Y to 25.4%, with x86 growth offsetting Itanium weakness. Number 2 IBM's share fell 340 bps to 23.6% ahead of the sale of its x86 server ops to Lenovo; on the bright side, IBM's decline narrowed from Q1's 600 bps.
Number 3 Dell's share fell 160 bps to 16.2%. Fourth placed Oracle's share grew 10 bps to 5.9%, with engineered system growth offsetting declines for older UNIX/SPARC server lines. Then comes Cisco, which recently proclaimed its UCS server ops are on a $3B/year run rate, and which saw its share rise 140 bps to 5.8% on the back of 35% growth. Cisco should pass Oracle in a quarter or two. White label direct vendors saw their share grow 110 bps to 6.6%. The shares of all other vendors rose 190 bps to 16.1%.