In the third quarter of 2015, worldwide server shipments grew 9.2 per cent from the third quarter of 2014, while vendor revenue increased 7.5 per cent year over year.

"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 per cent, 11.7 per cent and 24.2 per cent, respectively, for the period. Currency exchange rates are one of the main reasons for the disparity in regional server market performance."

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

HP continued to lead the worldwide server market based on revenue. The company posted just over $3.7 billion in server vendor revenue for a total market share of 27.3 per cent for the third quarter of 2015.

All of the top five global vendors had revenue increases for the third quarter of 2015, except for IBM with a decline of 42.8 per cent. 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 per cent for the RISC segment, but grew 15 per cent for mainframes to post a 5.1 per cent total growth in the third quarter for the server businesses that it retained.

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the third quarter of 2015 with a year-over-year shipment increase of 7.7 per cent. HP's worldwide server shipment market share was 22.2 per cent, virtually the same share as in the third quarter of 2014. 

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