BUSINESS
IDC upbeat on server sales
31-05-2004
by Craig Liddell
The Western European server market made a promising start to 2004, according to technology analyst IDC.
Strong growth in the x86 market, which is comprised of servers with Intel or AMD chips, lead the overall European server market to positive growth for the third consecutive quarter, IDC reported.
The Western European market recorded a 7.7 percent year-on-year growth in current dollar terms in the first quarter, according to IDC's European Server Tracker, following two quarters marked by positive growth. Overall, 371,000 units were shipped during the period.
"While the impact of a weak dollar on a market heavily dominated by US-based vendors should not be downplayed," said Nathaniel Martinez, senior analyst with IDC's European Server Group, "the rebound in server spending has continued each quarter since the second half of 2003, largely benefiting from a general uptake in IT spending across several verticals including finance, telecoms, government, and manufacturing."
Both IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) consolidated their leadership in the European server market, growing their revenue by more than 10 percent in the first quarter compared to a year ago. Except for its reduced instruction set computing (RISC) business, IBM experienced growth across all the major server segments. Significantly, its Linux servers grew by 67.9 percent in revenue compared to the first quarter of 2003.
Based on factory revenue, IBM retained top spot. In second place was HP, which witnessed a 11.7 percent increase on a year ago, largely fuelled by a 27.6 percent increase in its Windows server business. HP grabbed a 30.4 percent revenue share as a result, which represents USD1.02 billion (EUR0.84 billion) in factory revenue.
In unit terms, however, HP retained its number one position, shipping 152,802 units, a 24.7 percent increase compared a year ago.
Rounding out the top five were Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Dell.
The research follows another upbeat report from IDC. The analyst reported in March that the global server market surged in the fourth quarter with system sales from the low to high-end all increasing for the first time since 2001. Overall, server revenue increased 11.4 percent to USD13.7 billion (EUR11.22 billion) in the period. This came as unit shipments jumped 22 percent year-on-year.
Such encouraging figures led Daniel Fleischer, a senior analyst with IDC's European Server Group, to say that, "server technologies and trends such as IT consolidation are leading the way to recovery. We see a great opportunity from the vendor and customer perspective for x86 servers, Linux, and Windows servers, as well as server blades, all of which are fostering new deployments of IT infrastructure."
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 