The worldwide server market recovered in the second half of 2009
from the economic downturn, but plummeting sales in high-end
systems resulted in a decline in overall revenue in the fourth
quarter, market data released recently showed.
Sales of low-end servers in the quarter pushed overall shipments
up 4.5 percent year over year to 2.24 million units, Gartner
reported. However, global revenue for the quarter fell 3.2
percent to USD 1.49 billion.
While good news, the rise in shipments did not represent a
strong comeback for the market.
"The recovery that began in the third quarter of 2009 based on
x86 servers extended into the fourth quarter," Gartner researcher
Jeffrey Hewitt said in a statement. "However, it is important to
put this into context. The fourth quarter of 2008 was quite weak,
so the fourth quarter of 2009 did not have to produce huge x86
server numbers to result in an increase."
While relatively inexpensive blade servers grew by 11.1
percent in shipments and 22.1 percent in revenue for the
quarter, shipments and revenue of more expensive RISC/Itanium
servers plummeted 30.5 percent and 20 percent,
respectively.
IBM remained the market leader in terms of revenue in the
quarter, but saw a 5.9 percent decline that pushed its
market share down a percentage point to 32.7 percent. With the
exception of Sun Microsystems, the remaining top five vendors --
Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Fujitsu -- posted increases in revenue.
Sun has recently been acquired by Oracle.
In server shipments, HP continued to lead, as a 3.8
percent year over year increase in sales pushed its share up
two-tenths of a percent. The company's ProLiant brand showed growth
in the quarter, while all of its other brands saw a decrease in
revenue, Gartner said. Of the top five vendors, all but Sun posted
increases in shipments.
For the full year, worldwide server shipments fell 16.6 percent
from 2008, while revenue declined 18.3 percent. Gartner predicts a
return to shipment growth this year in the middle or high single
digits and revenue growth at a slightly lower level. The increases
are being buffered by the use of x86 server virtualization, which
consolidates physical machines as they are replaced, Gartner
said.