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Robust economy and demand combine to drive strong workstation growth in Q1’18
Buoyed by both consistent demand from its professional customer base and thriving macro-economic conditions, the workstation market posted solid growth in the first quarter of 2018. Year-over-year, the quarter saw 9.0% gains in unit volume and an even healthier (estimated) 13% increase in revenue, thanks to modestly higher ASPs. Sequentially, the quarter’s volume dipped 7.1%, but that's less of a decline than Q1's typical, historical slide (or at least comparable).
A continued string of bullish results provide more evidence of the different characteristics of the workstation market leading to the contrast in the broader PC-based marketplace. Where mainstream PC buyers are increasingly reaching “good enough” levels of computing with current PCs or alternative devices, lengthening replacement cycles, buyers of workstations continue to value generation-to-generation incremental improvements in features and improvements, with expectations of increasing productivity.
Among top-tier vendors, Dell and HP ticked up slightly to 41.6% and 39.6%, respectively, with Lenovo taking a step back from 17.6% to 16.6%.