TIBURON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--"If you thought the workstation market was in decline like its PC sibling, think again." So reports technology and market research firm, Jon Peddie Research (JPR), which has completed its data collection and analysis of the market's third quarter results. Worldwide, the industry shipped approximately 973.1 thousand workstations in the third quarter of 2013, marking 3.6% sequential growth in a quarter that's — more often than not — seasonally down. That figure nearly eclipsed the record 1.0 million units the market set back in 2011.
2013 has proven to be a good year for the market, as it experienced its second consecutive quarter of substantial growth. Third quarter results provide continuing evidence: workstations are not PCs ... and the performances of the respective markets are on very different trend lines.
"The market for PCs is continuing to decline, feeling the heat from alternative computing devices," explains JPR senior analyst and JPR Workstation Report author Alex Herrera. "Consumers are shifting en masse to tablets and smartphones, and either not replacing PCs as often, or deciding to go without altogether. But that trend is virtually absent in professional applications, where a tablet or smartphone can't possibly substitute for a workstation."
The firm remains bullish on the long-term prospects for professional computing markets, including workstations. "Professional applications are different," states firm principal Jon Peddie. "The demand on data, computes, and visualization is insatiable. There is no such thing as performance that's 'good enough', so every new generation of computing and rendering technology is readily adopted."
HP and Dell the big two today ... but Lenovo climbing steadily
Responsible for 41.9% of units sold, HP maintained its position as the dominant worldwide workstation supplier. Dell accounted for 32.0%, and Fujitsu chipped in 3.7%, most in EMEA and Japan.
While the market fortunes for those three vendors haven't changed much recently, there's a fourth player that's been slowly and steadily making gains in the workstation market: Lenovo. The Chinese vendor accounted for 13.7% of workstation units shipped in the quarter, the highest mark its held since the couple of years following its inheritance of IBM's ThinkPad mobile workstations in 2005.
Professional graphics market stays on growth path as well
The industry, primarily composed of the Nvidia/AMD duopoly, shipped a total of approximately 1.3 million workstation-caliber GPUs in the third quarter, including both mobile modules and deskside add-in cards. Volume represented an impressive year-over-year gain of 19.7%.
About the JPR Workstation Report
Now in its twelfth year, JPR’s Workstation Report - Professional Computing Markets and Technologies has established itself as the essential reference guide for hardware and software vendors and suppliers serving the workstation and professional graphics markets.
Subscribers to the JPR Workstation Report receive two in-depth reports per year providing a comprehensive analysis of the vendors and technologies driving the workstation platform. Clients also receive four quarterly reports detailing and analyzing market results for each calendar quarter. For information about purchasing the JPR Workstation Report, please call 415- 435-9368 or visit Jon Peddie Research at http://www.jonpeddie.com.
Based in Tiburon, California, Jon Peddie Research provides consulting, research, and other specialized services to technology companies, including graphics development, multimedia for professional applications and consumer electronics, high-end computing, and Internet-access product development.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Excerpts from the JPR Workstation Report and expert interviews are available on request.
