Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/398245
8 cgw s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 4 S P O T L I G H T "Cautious and tentative, but still headed in the right direction." That's how Jon Peddie Research (JPR) Senior Analyst and "JPR Workstation Report" Author Alex Herrera sums up 2014's fi rst-quarter market results in the workstation market. JPR has wrapped up and published its analysis of Q1 2014 results, painting a picture of a market that has more going for it than against it. Worldwide, the industry shipped approximately 945,800 workstations in the fi rst quarter of the year. That level corresponds to a sequential decline of 2.7% but a year-over- year (YoY) increase of 6.2%. With one key performance metric up and the other down, how does the fi rm sum up the quarter – as a step forward or one backward? "As is o en the case, that determination is all about context," explains Herre- ra, "particularly with respect to the market's cyclical nature. If we look back over the previous fi ve years, we fi nd that even in periods of general growth, Q1 results were more o en down than up, with an average sequential loss of 3.8%. Given that perspective, in combina- tion with the fairly robust 6.2% YoY fi gure, we're inclined to give the quarter a thumbs-up, albeit a tempered one." The market shares of the "big four" Tier 1 OEMs changed little in the fi rst quarter of 2014. With 39.7% of units sold (basically fl at from Q4), HP continues to dominate the workstation market, with num- ber-two Dell at 33.3%. Lenovo and Fujitsu shipped the exact same percentage of units in the fi rst quarter as they did in Q4 2013: 12.9% and 3.9%, respectively. JPR estimates the remaining 10.3% of units came from a host of smaller work- station suppliers, including Tier 2 OEMs and system integra- tors (SIs). The most notable OEM story worth telling in Q1 is, once again, Dell. A er a long decline in the market, the one-time market leader made a very clear decision in 2012 to recommit itself to the workstation marketplace, spark- ing a slow but steady comeback. The fi rst quarter continued to show modest but measurable improvement, as Dell hacked a full point of market share out of HP's current lead in the market. A M D B O O S T E D B Y A P P L E AMD and Nvidia create a virtual duopoly in the market for work- station GPUs, and the story line hasn't changed much in the past seven years: Nvidia has domi- nated, and AMD has hung on for minority share. The battle lines in the pair's struggle for market share have been remarkably fi xed in recent quarters. But that situa- tion changed in Q4 2013, as AMD began ramping up shipments of its custom FirePro cards (D300, D500, and D700) designed into Apple's recently revamped Mac Pro. Each of Apple's fl agship professional machines integrates not just one, but two, FirePro GPUs. As a result, the fi rst quarter of 2014 saw a substantial jump in FirePro volume, pushing AMD's share of the overall workstation GPU market up over fi ve points to 20.6%. However, Nvidia's Quadro brand continued to account for the lion's share of the market, with 78.8% of all units shipped in the quarter. And focusing strictly on GPUs shipping in traditional Windows and Linux workstations, Nvidia and AMD shares in the market appear generally unchanged. Pulling FirePro shipments to Apple out of the equation, Herrera estimates Nvidia shipped approximately 82.8% of the professional GPUs into workstations, while AMD contributed about 16.5%. WORKSTATION MARKET MAINTAINS SLOW, STEADY PROGRESS OTHER HP 40% DELL 33% LENOVO 13% FUJITSU 4% SOURCE: Jon Peddie Research (JPR)