MUMBAI, INDIA: Worldwide server shipments for the third quarter of 2009 dropped 17.1 percent over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period declined 15.5 percent according to Gartner, Inc.

Worldwide server revenues totaled $10.7 billion for the quarter, as worldwide servers shipments reached 1.2 million units.

Indian server market up 7pc in 2Q09

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president, Gartner, said: "It is important to put the yearly declines into perspective. Looking at the third quarter results from the sequential perspective, they showed an increase of 13.8 percent in shipments and 10.2 percent in revenues when compared to the second quarter of this year. That suggests that the market as a whole is showing signs of stabilization as we move toward the end of 2009."

IBM held the revenue lead in the worldwide server market for the quarter (see Table 1). IBM's overall revenue share lead over second-place HP was 1.5 percent for the quarter. Four of the top five vendors posted double-digit declines in revenue year over year. However, all of the top tier vendors experienced sequential revenue growth, except for Sun Microsystems.