Server shipments increased by 23pc in the first quarter of this year, according to new figures from Gartner. The numbers also show that HP overtook IBM to become the leading server vendor.
Whereas the number of servers shipped may have risen considerably, the revenue they earned was less impressive with an improvement of just 6pc.
“We’ve seen a return to growth on a worldwide level, but the market has not yet returned to the historical quarterly highs that were posted in 2008, and there were some interesting variations in that growth,” commented Jeffrey Hewitt, Gartner’s vice-president of research.
HP gained 2.7pc of market share to reach 31.5pc, earning US$3.389bn in revenue from shipments during the first three months of the year. IBM’s market share fell by 2.1pc which was enough to put it back into second place with 28.4pc market share and US$3.052bn in revenues.
HP’s ProLiant brand of systems was a strong performer in helping the IT firm to top spot by number of actual servers shipped. Dell claimed second place in terms of the number of units shipped, and was ranked third in revenue terms with 15.6pc market share.
Four of the top five vendors in server shipments, namely Dell, Fujitsu, HP and IBM, posted increases in units for Q1 2010, said Gartner.
In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, server shipments surpassed 606,000 units in the first quarter, an increase of 19.7pc from the same period last year. Server revenue was $3.2bn, which was year-on-year growth of 6.6pc.
“Although the EMEA server market is returning to growth in shipment and revenue terms, we need to recognise that this is growth from a low base, as the first quarter of 2009 saw a decline of 27.1pc in shipments and a decline of 34.2pc in revenue year over year,” said Adrian O’Connell, principal research analyst at Gartner.
“Current market levels remain below those seen at the start of 2008, indicating that there is opportunity for stronger penetration in the EMEA server market,” said O’Connell.
