Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/612975
n o v e m b e r . d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 c g w 2 5 broader market for PCs, and for several logical reasons. First, as a tool for professionals, the workstation won't be replaced by an alternative device like a phone or tablet, as has been the case in the consumer space. And second, serving demanding customers in need of any and all increases in performance they can get, workstations shouldn't see replacement cycles drag- ging out further, at least not nearly to the extent they are in the mainstream PC markets. Of course, logical reasons don't add to the corporate coffers nor satisfy management and shareholders. Volume and revenue do, and the industry was anxiously waiting to see if Q2 results would align with the logic, where Q1 certainly did not. Fortunately, the second quarter followed the script with a solid rebound, and the markets now appear set up for a healthy second half of the year, as OEMs and IHVs alike prepare for major product line refreshes in sup- port of Intel's imminent launch of its Skylake platform. Market shares for the dom- inant workstation OEM trio of HP, Dell, and Lenovo don't tend to fluctuate a great deal quarter-to-quarter. A couple of notable trends stand out over the past few years, however. One, Lenovo has seen the most growth, steadily driving up volume, mostly on the back of sales momentum in its home country of China. And two, aer a long decline, Dell was able to first stabilize its share and then slowly and steadily gain back some lost ground. Both trends continued in the second quarter of 2015, with Lenovo posting its highest yet share of 13.9 percent in Q2 '15. Dell followed suit with its own small step forward to rise to 34.9 percent – its highest level since the close of 2010. Not surprisingly, the gains of number-two Dell and num- ber-three Lenovo have come at the expense of number-one HP, whose share dropped to 38.4 percent, its lowest level in five years. Fujitsu and others (aggre- gating a host of smaller players) rounded out the shipment tally in Q2 '15 with 2.9 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the supporting IHV duopoly of Nvidia and AMD shipped approximately 1.15 million professional GPUs into the work- station space, with the former re- sponsible again for the lion's share of volume, with 80.4 percent of units shipped in the quarter. Of course, users are taking notice. They need top-level equipment to do top-level work. During the past few weeks, a number of workstation vendors have rolled out new offerings. Dell has released a new lineup of Precision mobile worksta- tions and has made significant updates to its line of Precision tower solutions. Boxx Technologies, mean- while, rolled out Apexx 1, a small workstation available with an overclocked Intel Core i7 or stan- dard Intel Xeon E5 processor, or most recently, overclocked quad-core Skylake processors. HP just announced new technology innovations for its Z Workstation portfolio. It also unveiled the HP ZBook Studio, the first quad-core worksta- tion Ultrabook, along with the next-gen line of ZBook mobile workstations and Z displays. Lenovo just announced the ThinkPad P40 Yoga multimode mobile workstation, which joins the newly released ThinkPad P50 and P70 mobile machines. And this is just the start to vendors introducing their latest wares. Indeed, there is some- thing for everyone! ■ Jon Peddie (jon@jonpeddie.com) is president of Jon Peddie Research and author of several books, including The History of Visual Magic in Computers. 35% Dell 15% M&E 38% HP 45% CAD (Mfg, AEC, Design) 14% Lenovo 15% Finance 10% Other 10% Medical 3% Fujitsu 5% Energy 5% Scientific 5% Govt/ Defense WORKSTATION OEM MARKET SHARE Q2 2015 (WORLDWIDE) WORKSTATION MARKET SEGMENTS APPLICATION WS GFX PERFORMANCE LEVEL SPECIAL REQUIREMENT VIRTUALIZE CANDIDATE GFX PRICE Design & Manufacturing, CAD Low to mid FP Yes Low Financial Low Multi-monitor Yes Low Rendering Very High 4 k No Very High Media & Entertainment High Local Memory Yes High Oil & Gas High Local Memory Yes High Engineering Simulation Very High GPU DPFP No High to Very High