Hewlett-Packard reclaimed the title of biggest seller of servers worldwide last quarter as IBM’s sales fell 10%, according to a report released Tuesday. H-P’s HPQ, +0.87% rise in server ranking comes a week after Chief Executive Meg Whitman told analysts that the Palo Alto, Calif.-based technology giant saw strong server sales in the last quarter due in part to the uncertainty created by Lenovo’s $2.3 billion acquisition of IBM’s IBM, -0.38% low-end server business. Earlier this month, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., a government panel that screens deals with potential national-security implications, approved the transaction. “We moved aggressively to take advantage of the uncertainty customers feel about the IBM-Lenovo transaction,” Whitman said. “In head-to-head fights with IBM for deals, we’re seeing clear improvement in win rates.” H-P recorded $3.2 billion in worldwide server sales in the second quarter, or 25.4% total share of the market, IDC said. IBM slipped to No. 2 with 23.6% share of the market. H-P sales grew 4% year-over-year, while IBM shed 10.2%, IDC said. Dell Inc. was at No. 3 with 16.6%, while Oracle ORCL, -0.48% and Cisco SystemsCSCO, -0.04% were tied at No. 4 with around 6% each. “The server market is experiencing the beginning of a cyclical refresh cycle as systems deployed shortly after the financial crisis are retired and replaced,” Matt Eastwood, IDC general manager for enterprise platforms, said in a statement. He said the refresh cycle is expected to continue well into 2015. The IDC data covers all classes of servers, which are systems used to connect computers in a network. H-P remained dominant in two main categories, low-end servers, also known as x86 systems, and blade servers. IBM remained the top vendor in higher-end, non-x86 server systems with 69.1% of total revenue. link