Workstation Report Series - Professional Computing Markets and Technologies [Q3'20 Quarterly]: The Workstation Market in Q3'20 Suffers the Worst Decline Since the Great Recession

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.

The JPR ‘Workstation Report series’ includes a breadth of market data and research, including six total reports issued over the year.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a very mixed bag of influences, both a boon and a drag on the market in Q1 and varied as a function of geography, platform, and vendor. Overall, the industry shipped around 1.4 million units, including the trio of Dell, HP, and Lenovo (DHL), and Others.

Providing the most comprehensive look at the workstation market available, the JPR Workstation Report Market Quarterly for Q1'20 delves into breadth and depth across all slices of the workstation and professional GPU markets, including:

Complete breakdown of traditional workstation market by units and revenue, and across product classes (mobile/entry/mid/high), platforms (mobile/entry/mid/high), geography and vendors

Workstation market forecast:

• A complete breakdown of the workstation GPU market by units and revenue, across product classes and vendors

• Breakdown of the workstation market by vertical

• Analysis and sizing of the impact of Apple platforms versus Windows/Linux workstations

• Analysis and sizing of the impact of emerging workstation virtualization (in its multiple forms)

• Analysis and sizing the impact of Intel's CPU-integrated graphics

Features:

The ‘Workstation report series’ consists of four quarterly market bulletins covering both workstations and professional graphics each around 40 to 50 pages and timed to highlight the previous quarter's (and year's) results in the workstation and professional graphics hardware markets. Each quarterly comes with a companion XLS file, with a comprehensive array of tables and figures that go into more detail than the basic text of the bulletin. The market quarterlies are released around eight weeks after the close of the previous quarter.

The service also includes two semi-annual revisions of the JPR Workstation Report, a complete reference manual on the workstation and professional graphics businesses. Anything you want to know about the markets, technologies and industry players can be found in this all-inclusive report.

Table of Contents

• Tables
• Figures
• Navigating this report

• Methodology
  • Some - but not all - white-box coverage

• Q1'20 Highlights

• COVID-19 impact in Q1'20: overall, by vendor, and by geo
  • Segmentation by vendor
    • A wide range of vendor Q1'20 fortunes in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic
    • Dell and Lenovo particularly strong in mobiles, HP more so in fixed
  • Distribution by platform
    • Mobiles vs. fixed: mobiles had been making modest gains as of late, and Q1'20's unique
    • needs gave it a big boost
    • Blurring the line: the Creator PC ... or is it a workstation?
    • Apple's Mac Pro, MacBook Pro and iMac Pro
    • Windows vs. Linux
    • Virtual workstations
  • CPU distribution by platform
  • Segmentation by price
    • Workstation ASPs
    • Fixed workstation distribution by price tiers
  • Segmentation by vertical
  • Segmentation by geography (Tier 1)
    • COVID-19 across geos in Q1'20
    • Mobile vs. fixed (aka deskbound) distribution by global geo
    • Regional distribution: APexJ sees comparable fixed volume as US and EMEA
    • Regional distribution: mobiles' CAGR outpacing fixed but gap is shrinking
    • Dell at highest US share in a decade
    • EMEA: Lenovo and Dell pick up on HP's decline in Q1
    • APexJ growth finally appears to be slowing (but ignore Q1 as part of that trend)
    • Dell eclipses HP in Japan for first time in a decade
    • ROW: Lenovo catches up to HP
    • EMEA breakdowns by sub-region (Tier 1)
    • APexJ breakdown by sub-region (Tier 1)

• Looking out to the rest of 2020

• A word on remote computing and the workstation market post-pandemic

• Full-year calendar 2019 results for workstations

• Professional GPU market weathers pandemic in Q1
  • AMD versus Nvidia battle lines essentially static in Q1'20.
  • Workstation GPU add-in card ASPs
  • Professional GPU market breakdown by vendor and segment
    • No material changes in per-segment market shares for Nvidia and AMD
    • Nvidia controls the low volume but highly lucrative upper end ... though AMD plays the
    • Apple wildcard
  • Vendors' product mixes

• Full-year calendar 2019 results for discrete workstation GPUs
  • Professional GPUs vs. CPU-integrated and consumer GPUs in workstations
    • Qualitative assessment: more consumer-class discrete GPUs or CPU-integrated?

• Outlook on the workstation market

Tables

• Table 1: Total workstation market (worldwide, in K units)
• Table 2: Estimated total workstation market revenue (in $M)
• Table 3: History of workstation unit share by vendor
• Table 4: History of workstation unit share by vendor (Tier 1 only)
• Table 5: Historical share of Windows and Linux in x86 based workstations (estimated, Apple platforms not included)
• Table 6: Typical characteristics of desktop workstation price tiers in Q1'20
• Table 7: Workstation unit sales by vertical/application (estimated)
• Table 8: YoY growth rates for Q1'20
• Table 9: Total workstations shipped by year (units and revenue)
• Table 10: Growth (loss) of Tier 1 vendors' units
• Table 11: Worldwide shipments of discrete workstation GPUs (K units, including mobiles)
• Table 12: Professional discrete (mobile and add-in card) GPU market share history by vendor (units)
• Table 13: Worldwide quarterly revenue of professional graphics add-in cards ($M, estimated retail-calibrated, no mobiles)
• Table 14: Professional graphics hardware classes and price bands (retail pricing)
• Table 15: Discrete professional GPU units shipped, yearly totals
• Table 16: Discrete professional GPU units shipped, yearly growth by segment
• Table 17: Discrete professional GPU add-in card ASPs (retail-price calibrated, no mobiles), yearly
• Table 18: Discrete professional GPU unit distribution (all GPUs)

Figures

• Figure 1: Share of overall units, Tier 1 (aka DHL) only
• Figure 2: Share of overall units, by vendor (including Others)
• Figure 3: Share of mobile workstation units, by vendor
• Figure 4: Shares of fixed workstation units, by vendor
• Figure 5: Fixed workstations were outselling mobiles 2:1 through the end of 2019.... 2020's pandemic will drive up mobiles more than fixed
• Figure 6: Rough breakdown of primary mobile workstation segments
• Figure 7: HP's current set of five fixed models (left to right): Premium 2S Z8, Entry 2S Z6, Premium 1S Z4, and Entry 1S Z240, in both SFF and mini-tower form factors (Source: HP)
• Figure 8: Today's Tier 1 products fitting the four de facto fixed platforms
• Figure 9: The Entry 1S platform has devoured a big chunk of the fixed market in the last decade (estimated)
• Figure 17: Where virtual workstations fit in the SBC (server-based computing) landscape
• Figure 18: Number of virtual workstations "shipped" in 2018, relative to traditional client side models (estimated)
• Figure 10: The history of Intel's CPU mix into workstations (estimated)
• Figure 11: Overall shares of Core and Xeon brands in fixed workstation market (estimated)
• Figure 12: Rough history of Xeon vs. Core brand shipments of Intel CPUs to mobile workstations
• Figure 13: Approximate Q1'20 Intel shipments into overall workstation market by processor
• Figure 14: Rough share of dual-capable (though not necessarily dual-populated) workstations as a percentage of all fixed systems
• Figure 15: While the share of 2S-capable workstations is in decline, the 2nd CPU attach rate is relatively stable (estimated)
• Figure 16: The rise and fall of Opteron as a workstation platform
• Figure 17: The rise and fall of Opteron as a workstation platform
• Figure 19: Workstation ASPs over time
• Figure 20: Workstation price distribution (circa 2019)
• Figure 21: History of fixed workstation share by price tier (retail pricing, estimated)
• Figure 22: Workstation unit sales by vertical/application
• Figure 23: Geographic distribution (by unit shipments) over time
• Figure 24: Geographic distribution of mobile workstation sales, by region (unit share)
• Figure 25: Geographic distribution of fixed workstation sales, by region (unit share)
• Figure 26: Unit growth, by platform and region (average of four previous quarters' 3-year CAGR)
• Figure 27: Tier 1 vendor shares of US over time
• Figure 28: Tier 1 vendor shares of EMEA over time
• Figure 29: Tier 1 vendor shares of Asia/Pac (excluding Japan) over time
• Figure 30: Tier 1 vendor shares of Japan region time
• Figure 31: Tier 1 vendor shares of Rest of World (ROW) region over time
• Figure 32: EMEA breakdown by sub-region
• Figure 33: Geographic distribution of mobile workstation sales, by EMEA sub-region (unit share)
• Figure 34: Geographic distribution of fixed workstation sales, by EMEA sub-region (unit share)
• Figure 35: Unit growth, by platform and EMEA sub-region (average of four previous quarters' year CAGR)
• Figure 36: Germany sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 37: UK/Ireland sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 38: Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 39: Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 40: Alps (Switzerland, Austria) sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 41: France sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 42: Italy sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 43: BeNeLux sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 44: Middle East and Africa (MEA) sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 45: Iberia (Spain, Portugal) sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 46: Greece sub-region, breakout by vendor
• Figure 47: Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) breakdown by sub-region (Tier 1 shipments only)
• Figure 48: China sub-region, Tier 1 unit share by vendor
• Figure 49: India sub-region, Tier 1 unit share by vendor
• Figure 50: Rest of APexJ sub-region, Tier 1 unit share by vendor
• Figure 51: Geographic distribution of mobile workstation sales, by APexJ sub-region (unit share)
• Figure 52: Geographic distribution of fixed workstation sales, by APexJ sub-region (unit share)
• Figure 53: APexJ workstation unit growth by sub-region and platform (average of past four quarters' 3-year CAGR)
• Figure 54: Overall yearly workstation unit share by vendor
• Figure 55: The discrete workstation GPU market is trailing that of workstations, due to incursion of CPU-integrated GPUs
• Figure 56: Professional graphics card ASPs, by vendor over time
• Figure 57: History of overall professional GPU product mix (units, all segments)
• Figure 58: Vendor unit share history: mobile professional graphics segment
• Figure 59: Vendor unit share history: Entry 3D add-in card segment
• Figure 60: Estimated professional graphics add-in card revenue vendor market share (no mobiles)
• Figure 61: Vendor unit share history: mid-range 3D add-in card segment
• Figure 62: Vendor shares of combined High/Ultra-high professional segment over time
• Figure 63: AMD's mix of Radeon Pro GPU products over time
• Figure 64: Nvidia's mix of Quadro GPU products over time
• Figure 65: Workstation shipments relative to discrete professional GPU shipments
• Figure 66: Estimating fixed workstations in use without professional discrete GPU
• Figure 67: Estimating mobile workstations in use without professional discrete GPU (i.e. relying on CPU-integrated graphics)
• Figure 68: Workstation market forecast 2020 - 2022 (units)