X86 drives worldwide server market

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Server shipments have grown by 14.2 per cent in the last three months, according to an analyst firm.

Gartner also claimed revenues were up 15.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2010 and lay a lot of the thanks at the door of x86 models.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, said shipments for x86 servers had grown by 14.9 per cent alone, along with revenue increases of 29.5 per cent, continuing the trend of growth from the first half of the year.

“Also following earlier trends, the x86-based server market provided an increase in average selling prices from more robust server configurations to accommodate virtualisation,” he said.

“These higher average selling prices pushed revenue higher than shipments, and this was the case in the third quarter for all regions.”

Europe performed below the average, with the EMEA region showing just a 10.4 per cent increase in shipments and only 7.4 per cent in revenue growth. However, this could be blamed on the performance in the Middle East and Africa, the only region to drop in revenue – down 2.9 per cent – and where shipment growth was a lowly 4.2 per cent.

“The EMEA server market’s recovery continues but growth rate levels remain lower than in 2008,” said Adrian O’Connell, research director at Gartner.

“While the recovery is encouraging, ongoing economic uncertainty in many European countries continues to inhibit higher levels of demand and spending.”

HP ruled the roost as the company with the biggest market share, replacing IBM which had led the way in the third quarter of 2009. It now has market share of 32.1 per cent and revenues reaching just over $3.9 billion (£2.5 billion) – reflecting growth of 22.5 per cent.

Although Dell still lurked behind Big Blue and IBM in third place, the company showed the biggest percentage increase when it came to revenue, flying up 25.6 per cent from the same period last year to $1.79 billion.

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