Demand for blades and x86 boxes

Worldwide server revenues reach US$13bn in the third quarter of 2006. Strong demand for blades and x86 servers helped push worldwide server shipments by 9.1 per cent compared to the same quarter last year, new research has reported.

According to Gartner, worldwide server revenue for the quarter climbed 4.4 percent while revenues reached US$13bn.

"Blade servers and x86 servers continue to produce the highest growth levels within the overall market," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research director at Gartner.

"Both of these server types show ongoing installation growth at the front and middle of the web server tiers. RISC-Itanium Unix servers fell six per cent in shipments for the quarter, but grew slightly in revenue at 0.6 per cent."

The top three shipment leaders in order in this segment (Sun Microsystems, IBM and HP) retained their relative positions from the same quarter last year, but their revenue positions reshuffled with IBM taking the lead, Sun in second place and HP in third.

IBM continued to lead the worldwide server market based on revenue, enjoying increases for the quarter in System p/p Series, System x/x Series and System z/z Series, but experiencing declines in System i/i Series which resulted in an overall revenue increase of 7.4 per cent for the quarter.

Big Blue increased its shipments 7.7 per cent for the period, but it lost 0.2 per cent of shipment share compared to the same quarter a year ago.

In terms of server shipments, HP dropped 0.5 per cent in share but retained its worldwide server shipment lead. The share gap between HP and second-place Dell dropped 0.8 per cent for the quarter.

Based on server shipments, HP maintained its number one position with 214,000 units. IBM and Dell remained in their respective second and the third positions, with just under 4,000 units separating the two vendors.

"Fujitsu Siemens was the only vendor among the top five manufacturers to record a year-on-year shipment decline in the third quarter of 2006, but despite this fall the company managed to secure its fourth position," said Malik.

In revenue terms, IBM regained the number one spot from HP, reversing the number one and two positions from the second quarter.

IBM's server revenue increased 12.8 per cent year on year, with a 34.3 per cent share of the total EMEA server revenue market.

HP's server revenue declined 6.2 per cent compared to the same period last year, accounting for 31 per cent of the total EMEA server revenue market.

"Sun had an outstanding third quarter, exhibiting the highest server revenue growth of the top five vendors. Demand for the refreshed product line, the T1 and Opteron-based systems in particular helped the company drive its revenue upwards," Malik said.

For the second consecutive quarter, Sun posted "significant" annual growth in shipments and revenue for the period at 6.4 and 24.7 per cent respectively.

Dell also posted growth in shipments (10.5 per cent) and revenue (10.9 per cent), while the fifth global vendor, Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens, fell 5.9 per cent in shipments and 8.6 per cent in revenue for the quarter.

In EMEA, server shipments in the third quarter of 2006 increased 2.7 per cent over the same quarter last year, while server revenue for the same period increased 3.5 per cent.

Server revenue totalled $3.89bn for the quarter and server shipments reached 572,000 units in EMEA.

"In EMEA, the third quarter of 2006 saw a slight slowdown in x86 server shipment growth, at three per cent increase year on year. The blade server segment continued to account for strong demand and shipments increased 34.2 per cent," said Samina Malik, principal research analyst at Gartner.

"RISC-Itanium Unix servers returned to growth this quarter, with shipments increasing 0.5 per cent and revenue growing 2.9 per cent."

Copyright ©v3.co.uk

and blades boxes demand drives for hardware sales server servers & storage x86