Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has referred to the workstation market’s Q2’14 as a ‘breakout quarter’ (while admitting that characterising a mature market as ‘breakout’ “verges upon [an] oxymoron”).
Q2 saw record levels of unit volume and revenue in global workstations. 1.05 million units were shipped worldwide: 10.8% QoQ and 11.5% YoY growth. The result is a change to the healthy-but-sideways movement recently exhibited. Report author Alex Herrera noted that JPR has been expecting a “thurst forward” for some time, due to more robust economic conditions and the lack of the tablet threat that PCs have been experiencing. Windows XP’s end-of-life has also provided “a helpful tail-wind” for replacement cycles.
Shares were much the same as Q1. HP’s leading 39.7% share was unchanged, while Dell saw minor gains and moved to 33.6%. Lenovo was, relatively, the winner of the quarter, rising from 12.9% to 13.7%.
Shipments of AMD’s Firepro professional graphics cards, which were released in Q4’13 and are used in Apple’s new Mac Pro, continued to climb. Nvidia still controls the professional graphics – its Quadro brand has a 74% share – but AMD rose to 25%.
