Global Server Shipment Growth Weak In 1Q12: Gartner

Worldwide server shipments grew 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2012, while server revenue declined 1.8 percent year over year, according to Gartner, Inc.

“The first quarter of 2012 produced relatively weak shipment growth on a global level with a variation in results by region,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, Research Vice President, Gartner. “All regions showed growth in server shipments except Western Europe which posted a decline of 6.4 percent. In terms of revenue, Asia/Pacific, Middle East/Africa, and Western Europe posted declines. These results are not that surprising considering the current variations in regional economic conditions.”

“x86 servers forged ahead and grew 1.7 percent in units in the first quarter of 2012 and 5.6 percent in revenue. RISC/Itanium Unix servers declined 5.7 percent in shipments and dropped 15.2 percent in vendor revenue compared to the same quarter last year. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a decline of 16.4 percent in vendor revenue,” Hewitt said.

From a regional standpoint, Eastern Europe grew the most significantly in shipments with a 16.0 percent increase. Japan posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 10.6 percent for the period.

IBM had the lead in the worldwide server market based on revenue – the company posted nearly $3.5 billion in server vendor revenue for a total share of 28.1 percent worldwide for the first quarter of 2012. IBM’s server revenue declined 7.2 percent. Most of IBM’s revenue contribution came from its Power Systems brand with some contribution by System x as well.

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Among the top five global server vendors, Fujitsu was the only company to post positive revenue growth (at 4.5 percent).

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the first quarter of 2012 with relatively flat shipment growth (-0.4 percent). This decline was driven primarily by drops in HP’s ProLiant and Integrity brands. HP’s worldwide server shipment share was 29.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012.

Fujitsu and Cisco were the two vendors among the top five to experience server shipment growth in the first quarter of 2012.

In terms of server form factors, blade servers fell 1.3 percent in shipments and grew 5.6 percent in revenues for the quarter. The rack-optimised form factor climbed 0.4 percent in shipments and fell 5.3 percent in revenue for the first quarter of 2012.