[Bostonian]

The article says

`Analysts clash on Supermicro’s ability to hold on to its position longer term. Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson said, historically, no company selling servers has had more than 30% market share.

“There’s not a reason Dell can’t do exactly what they’re doing,” Bryson said.

Others aren’t so sure. Some analysts say that established competitors will have a hard time bringing new products to market so quickly and have larger revenue streams from software and services.

Supermicro is trying to gain further market share by doubling down on AI and continuing to ship its servers out quickly. The company is also keeping prices low to entice new customers: Its gross profit margin totaled around 15% in its latest quarter, down from 17% in the previous one. HPE, by comparison, had gross margins of 36% in its latest quarter.`

[lightedman]

“There’s not a reason Dell can’t do exactly what they’re doing,” Bryson said.

I find that quote interesting. As someone that worked for Dell, I can figure out why - they're heavily-invested in the support side of things. They're too busy with that and their current consumer and business-class offerings that realistically the server market segment they're already in doesn't exactly overlap with Super Micro, and most likely never will outside of some buzzword AI marketing.

[paulmd]

Dell also can’t do what supermicro does because it would eat their margins. The dirty secret is that supermicro is making headway because they’re a lot cheaper than dell or hp. If dell/hp start to compete on price they don’t really gain any additional marginal business to speak of, but they do lose margin on all their current contracts (who presumably want to get the discount too).

The “companies become too stagnant to disrupt their own revenue streams” isn’t just a trope about leadership vision, it’s a very real financial phenomenon. Customers don’t like open price discrimination and often it’s better to keep your best customers than to chase after new ones and push all your margins downwards.

See also: the gpu market.

[idontknowifican]

fwiw:

my work is moving from supermicro to dell nodes due to the immaturity of the support (interface and personnel).

[mrweasel]

Funny, we're going the other direction, for much the same reasons. I suppose different organizations have different needs and Dell is moving in the wrong direction for us, while SuperMicro seems to deliver in the areas we value.