Server sales growing and IBM the leader worldwide


25 Aug 2008

Despite economic turbulence of late, global sales of servers are going up, with research by Gartner revealing a 12.2pc increase in worldwide server shipments to 2.3 million units for the second quarter of 2008.

Worldwide server revenue for the same period climbed 5.7pc to US$13.8bn, the research shows.

“In spite of economic constraints in some markets like the US, on a worldwide basis, servers continued to grow in the second quarter of the year,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice-president at Gartner.

“The most significant driver in the quarter continued to be an upswing in x86 server replacements that started in the first quarter. This, coupled with web data centre build-outs and growth in emerging markets, produced solid Q2 results.”

IBM maintained the lead in terms of server revenue generation worldwide for the quarter. It has solid increases in both its System p and System z brands, which offset some revenue declines in its other brands.

This produced a year-to-year revenue increase of 11.5pc for the period and pushed IBM’s market share up by 1.6pc, Gartner said.

Dell and HP had revenue increases for the period, while Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens and Sun both experienced drops in revenue.

By Sorcha Corcoran