Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) server revenue in the fourth quarter of 2010 has reached $4.3bn, an increase of 9.1% compared to the same quarter previous year, while the number of servers shipped increased by 10.6% year-on-year and 2.3 million units were sold, according to market research and analyst firm IDC.
For the full year 2010, EMEA server revenue increased year-on-year by 7.3% to $13.8bn.
By technology, x86 servers reached $2.7bn in revenue and grew 15.4% year on year while growth in non-x86 was flat at 0.1% year on year, with revenue reaching $ 1.6bn.
The research firm said that the Mainframes (servers running on CISC processors) made a strong comeback, with demand surpassing the $600m mark in EMEA, an increase of 62.6% year on year while RISC revenue was down year on year by 19.3%, and EPIC was down 15.8%.
Volume servers (servers priced below $25,000) posted annual revenue growth of 9.1 % and the vast majority (98.6%) of volume servers shipped in EMEA were x86 systems, whereas midrange servers, which declined 20.2% year on year, were evenly spread between the x86 and non-x86 segments with 48.9% and 51.1% of units, respectively.
The research firm said that all form factors grew, indicating that market demand is diversifying as organisations look into different environments based on hybrid architectures.
Blade revenue growth was above the market average, at 11.4% year on year, but it was nearly matched by rack-optimised systems (up 8.7% annually) and non-rack servers (up 8.6% on the back of mainframe demand).
HP maintained its top position for the 12th consecutive quarter after growing its market share to 36% and $1.6bn in revenue and IBM and Dell market share increased to 35.7% and 9.7%, respectively.
