Workstation PC market boasts solid growth in Q3 tips research firm

Workstations are to the business and professional worlds what the laptop or home PC are to the consumer world. While the consumer PC market is taking a beating at the hands of alternative devices like the tablet and smartphone, the same isn't true for the workstation market. At least that is what research firm Jon Peddie Research says in its latest report on the state of the workstation market for Q3 2013.

According to JPR, the workstation market for the professional world is doing well. JPR says this is because while smartphones and tablets can replace a consumer's laptop or desktop at home, smartphones and tablets can't replace workstation computers for professional users. During Q3 2013, the global workstation market shipped 973.1 thousand workstations.

That amount of shipments works out to a 3.6% sequential growth for a quarter that it normally a seasonally slow quarter. The record for workstation shipments in Q3 is 1 million units, and that was set in 2011. The top two firms in the workstation market right now are HP and Dell, but JPR says that Lenovo is coming on strong.

HP sold 41.9% of all workstations during the quarter. Dell sold 32% of all workstations and Fujitsu had 3.7% of the market. Lenovo had 13.7% of the workstation market, its highest percentage since 2005. On the professional graphics side, there were 1.3 million workstation-caliber GPUs shipped in Q3 combining mobile and desktop GPUs. That makes a year over year gain of 19.7%.

SOURCE: JPR