HP leads thin client and terminal client device market with 28% share in Q3, says IDC

Enterprise networking vendor HP is leading the thin client and terminal client device market with 28.0 percent share in the third quarter of 2013, said IDC.

HP ranked first in four out of eight regions during the third quarter.

Dell is the second leading player with 22.7 percent worldwide market share in Q3. Interestingly, Dell is the number one vendor in the U.S. with 37.1 percent share. Dell also saw big gains in China and is now ranked as the number 2 vendor.

NComputing, which is in the third position, has 15.9 percent market share. Despite having no shipments in PRC, NComputing remained the top vendor in APeJ and Latin America. This quarter, they also ranked first in Middle East & Africa.

Centerm holds the number 2 position in the APeJ market with 20.1 percent share in that region. However, it is the leading vendor in China with 42.2 percent local share.

Igel market share declined 1.5 percent from previous quarter. It still had a strong 20.8 percent year-over-year increase at the worldwide level. 89 percent of its shipments are concentrated in Western Europe.

IDC says worldwide thin client and terminal client device shipments totaled 1.38 million units in the third quarter of 2013, an increase of 8.5 percent from the previous quarter.

IDC expects shipments for the full year to be 5.31 million units, representing 0.2 percent year-over-year growth. Shipments will reach 5.86 million units in 2014, growing 10.5 percent. By 2017, these devices are expected to reach 8.01 million units.

The United States was eclipsed by Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ) as the largest region for enterprise client devices. APeJ now holds 28.5 percent share of the worldwide market, with the U.S. trailing closely with 27.0 percent share. The reason for this growth in APeJ came from China, which grew 32.0 percent from previous quarter.

Jennifer Song, research analyst, Worldwide Trackers, said cost reduction as well as the easier endpoint management that desktop virtualization provides will continue to drive thin client growth, with VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) replacing old PCs. There will be more mobile virtualization applications. For the remainder of the year, although companies see value in VDI, pilot programs are beginning to roll out slowly. In 2014, VDI adoption should accelerate among enterprise firms.

Thin Clients continue to make up the vast majority (96 percent) of enterprise client devices and saw an increase of 11 percent from the previous quarter. In contrast, terminal clients declined by 30 percent.

The standalone form factor constitutes the largest segment of the overall market at 90 percent share. For the mobile form factor, 60 percent of the worldwide share is concentrated in Japan. Thin clients with LCD are dominant in APeJ, the United States, and Western Europe.

Thin Clients without operating systems (zero clients) now hold 32 percent share among the thin client segment, which is an increase of 22 percent from the previous quarter. Windows Embedded OS thin clients are the largest at 40 percent share.

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