Worldwide server shipments up 7.2pc – Gartner

Worldwide server shipments in the third quarter of 2011 increased 7.2pc year-on-year, while revenue rose 5.2pc year-on-year, according to Gartner, Inc.

“The third quarter of 2011 produced growth on a global level but there was some significant variation in growth by region,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice-president at Gartner.

“All regions showed growth in both shipments and vendor revenue except for Western Europe, which posted a 4.9pc decline in revenue for the period. Asia/Pacific grew the most significantly in shipments, with a 23.9pc increase. Eastern Europe posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 27.4pc for the period.”

“x86 servers forged ahead and grew 7.6pc in units and 9.3pc in revenue,” Hewitt added.

“Some regions, like Western Europe and the United States, did not produce as much relative x86-based server growth because of comparatively stronger third-quarter results in 2010.

“RISC/Itanium Worldwide Unix server shipments declined 6.8pc, but vendor revenue increased 3.5pc compared to the same quarter last year. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a decline of 6.9pc,” Hewitt said.

All of the top 5 global vendors had revenue increases for the third quarter of 2011 except HP and Oracle.

HP declined 3.6pc year-on-year and Oracle achieved flat growth. IBM took the lead in the worldwide server market based on revenue – the company posted just over US$3.8bn in server vendor revenue for a total share of 29.7pc for the third quarter of 2011. This share was down 0.5pc year-on-year. Most of IBM’s revenue growth came from its Power Systems line, with some contribution by System X, as well.

Table 1
Worldwide: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 3Q11 (US Dollars)

^{Source: Gartner (November 2011)}

Table 2
Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipment Estimates, 3Q11 (Units)

^{Source: Gartner (November 2011)}