x86 in good momentum

MUMBAI: In the first quarter of 2011, worldwide server shipments grew 8.5 per cent year-on-year, while revenue increased 17.3 per cent, according to Gartner, Inc. "The first quarter continued a quarterly trend of year-on-year growth in both shipments and vendor revenue," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "All regions showed growth in both shipments and vendor revenue, with the exception of Japan.”

 

"x86 servers forged ahead and grew 8.6 per cent in units for the year and 17.5 per cent in revenue. Following earlier trends, the x86-based server market provided an increase in average selling prices that pushed revenue higher than shipments, and this was the case in the first quarter for all regions," Hewitt said. "RISC/Itanium Unix servers finally exited their slump and grew 5.2 per cent in shipments and 20.7 percent in vendor revenue, compared with the same quarter last year. The 'other' CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a growth in vendor revenue of 19.6 per cent."

 

From the regional standpoint, Eastern Europe grew the most significantly in shipments with a 21.1 per cent increase. Eastern Europe also posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 36.0 per cent for the period.

 

All the top five global vendors except Fujitsu had revenue increases for the first quarter of 2011. HP was the market leader, based on worldwide server revenue. The company posted just over $3.8 billion in worldwide server vendor revenue for a total share of 30.2 per cent for the first quarter of 2011. This share was down 1.2 per cent year-on-year.