Dell Server Sales Gain Ground on HP

Dell’s President of Enterprise Solutions, Marius Haas recently revealed Dell Server sales for the first quarter of 2013. Haas was pleased with the performance of the company in this sector and commented that the company was progressing. With momentum in its favor, Dell was posing a serious challenge to rival Hewlett-Packard (HP). Not surprisingly, HP had plenty to say about the Haas’ comment and Dell’s assertion that their performance during Q1 was something to write home about.

This comes as an interesting piece of news for Dell. The company has been embroiled in a saga over it going private in the near future. Founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Management have made a $24.4 billion leveraged bid for the company which is likely to be accepted in the weeks to come. The news that the server sales for Dell have improved is bound to delight stakeholders as the company’s performance in the enterprise sector continues to be strong.

Haas’ comments were based mostly on a report issued by Gartner, a leading market researcher. According to Gartner’s report, Dell’s server sales had improved by around 2.6% during the first quarter of the year in comparison with the same quarter for 2012. On the other hand, the shipment share for HP had fallen by over 15% relative to the first quarter of last year. Needless to say, the statistics clearly show that Dell is growing in leaps and bounds with regards to server sales.

Still, that doesn’t mean that Dell has been able to dethrone HP from its position at the top of the market share for servers. Currently, HP holds 25% of the market share, which is surprising given the data provided by Gartner in the report. The same report shows that at this time last year, the market share for the company was just over 29%. On the other hand, Dell’s market share in servers has improved from 21.5% last year to 22.2% this year.

HP’s fall is steep when compared with the increase in Dell’s market share. Gartner has said that the data is subject to change when concrete figures and statistics are made available regarding both companies’ server sales in the first quarter. Currently, the report is based on market projections and the performance of the companies as estimated by experts. On the whole, the market for servers is done by nearly 1% which means the two companies are competing in a receding market.

However, HP doesn’t believe Dell should be too happy about its server sales improving during Q1. The reason for this is that this is the first time in close to two decades that Dell has been able to overtake HP for server sales during a quarter. In HP’s statement, a high-ranking official said that the company had been outselling for ’67 quarters’ prior to this. His view is that HP isn’t seeing this as a changing trend or a threat to its market share.

For Dell, improved performance in Q1 is important when it makes the decision regarding the buyout. HP is also in a transition, so both companies are hardly stable when it comes to current structure and ownership.

[Image via dell]