The factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew at 5.6 per cent year over year to ?9.8bn in the second quarter of 2005, marking the ninth consecutive quarter of positive overall revenue growth, according to a report from market advisory firm IDC.
Volume server revenue grew 11.1 per cent year over year and continues to represent the primary growth engine for the server market overall. Revenue for midrange enterprise servers grew 4.3 per cent year over year, marking the second consecutive quarterly increase in that segment. However, the high-end enterprise server market, which grew from the fourth quarter of 2003 through the third quarter of 2004, declined 3 per cent year over year, its third consecutive quarter of reduced spending.
While the high-end enterprise server market dipped, sales of high-end Unix servers grew, demonstrating their resilience in the corporate data centre as platforms for mission-critical workloads and workload consolidation.
Year-over-year unit shipment growth of 10.9 per cent – the lowest unit growth in more than two years – reflects moderating unit growth in the volume server segment, more difficult compares, and a shifting product mix.
Linux servers posted their 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with year-over-year revenue growth of 45.1 per cent and unit shipments up 32.1 per cent. Customers continue to expand the role of Linux servers into an ever increasing array of workloads in both the commercial and technical segments of the market.
Microsoft Windows servers showed strong growth, as revenues grew 14.3 per cent and unit shipments grew 10.9 per cent year over year. Significantly, quarterly revenue of $4.1 billion for Windows servers represented 33.5 per cent of overall quarterly factory revenue, as customers deploy more fully configured Windows servers for server virtualization initiatives.
Unix servers experienced 2.5 per cent revenue growth year over year; however, unit shipments declined 8.7 per cent when compared with the first quarter of 2004. Worldwide Unix revenues of $4.3 billion for the quarter reflect continued IT investment in this server market segment with particular strength in the high-end of the market.
IBM maintains the number one spot in the worldwide server systems market with 31.9 per cent market share in factory revenue, growing its revenue by 4.1 per cent when compared to the second quarter of 2004.
HP continued to hold the number two spot in terms of factory revenue with 28.5 per cent share, growing revenue 11.5 per cent compared to the second quarter of 2004.
In terms of unit shipments, HP maintained the number one vendor worldwide with 29.6 per cent server shipment share growing 6.4 per cent year over year. Dell maintained the number two spot in terms of worldwide server shipments with 25.3 per cent share, growing shipments 25.0 per cent compared to the second quarter of 2004.
Dell and Sun tied for third place in factory revenue with 11.3 per cent and 10.5 per cent share respectively. This is the fourth consecutive quarter that Dell and Sun have been within one point of market share as Dell experienced 22.3 per cent year-over-year revenue growth while Sun’s revenues declined 5.3 per cent when compared to the second quarter of 2004.
(c) John Tilak
