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that, factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew at 5.3% year over
year to $12.1 billion in the first quarter of 2005, marking the eighth consecutive
quarter of positive overall revenue growth.
Volume
server revenue grew 15.6% year over year and continues to represent the primary
growth engine for the server market overall. Revenue for midrange enterprise
servers grew 6.1% year over year, marking the second consecutive quarterly
increase in that segment.
According
to IDC, this may reflect increased IT spending to run more scalable workloads
and consolidation/virtualization initiatives than can be deployed onto volume
servers.
Meanwhile,
the high-end enterprise server market, which grew from the fourth quarter of
2003 through the third quarter of 2004, declined 13.9% year over year. One
factor in this drop could be continued price compression, which reduces average
sales prices for servers from the high-end enterprise into the midrange
enterprise space, says IDC.
"While
the market is not accelerating at the same pace that it did in 2004, IT
spending remained strong in the first quarter as customers continued to invest
in new infrastructure,” said Matt Eastwood, program vice president of Worldwide
Server Research at IDC.
The market findings
from the study:
- Year-over-year unit
shipment growth of 13.5% - the lowest unit growth in two years - reflects
moderating unit growth in the volume server segment.
- Linux servers
posted their eleventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with
year-over-year revenue growth of 35.2% and unit shipments up 31.1%.
- Microsoft Windows
servers showed strong growth, as revenues and unit shipments grew 12.3% and 10.7%
respectively year over year.
- Unix servers
experienced 2.8% revenue growth year over year and 5.0% unit shipment growth
over 1Q04. Worldwide Unix revenues of $4.2 billion for the quarter, coupled
with revenue and shipment growth, reflect continued IT investment in this
server market segment.
IBM held on to its top ranking as HP moved into a statistical tie for
number 1 in the worldwide server systems market with 28.3% and 27.6% factory
revenue share respectively. Dell and Sun tied for third place in factory
revenue with 10.8% and 9.9% share respectively. In terms of unit shipments, HP
maintained its number 1 position worldwide with 30.4% server shipment share.
Dell maintained the number 2 spot in terms of worldwide server shipments with
24.5% share, growing shipments 17.4% compared to 1Q04.
Although
demand for x86 servers continued to be strong, growth has moderated. Factory
revenue grew 13.2% to nearly $5.8 billion worldwide while unit shipments grew
14.2% to nearly 1.5 million servers worldwide. Dell, HP, Fujitsu/FSC and Sun
all outpaced the category's growth rate, posting year-over-year revenue growth
in excess of
Source: IDC