Worldwide server shipments grew 4.5% to 2.23 million units for the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to the same period last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period declined 3.2% to $12.6bn, according to a study by IT research and advisory firm Gartner.
Of the top five global vendors, HP, Dell and Fujitsu grew in revenue for the quarter while IBM and Sun posted declines.
IBM held the highest market share revenue in the worldwide server market with 32.7%, a lead of 1.4% over second-place HP. IBM server vendor revenue declined 5.9% to $4.1bn, compared to same quarter last year. Dell gained the third spot with a market share of 12.1%, followed by Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu with market share 7.6% and 4.5%, respectively.
In server shipments, HP retained the top spot with a market share of 32.1% in the forth quarter of 2009, driven primarily by its ProLiant brands. HP server shipments increased 3.8% to 717,212, compared to same period last year. Dell held the second spot with 21.7% market share, followed by IBM and Fujitsu with 14.3% and 3.0% share, respectively, Gartner said.
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Sun Microsystems showed the highest decline in the server vendor shipment with 23.8% year over year to 61,866, accounting for 2.8% of the total market share.
For full year 2009, worldwide server shipments declined 16.6%, compared to 2008, while 2009 server revenue declined 18.3% versus 2008.
Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president of Gartner, said: The recovery that began in the third quarter of 2009 based on x86 servers extended into the fourth quarter. However, it is important to put this into context.
“The fourth quarter of 2008 was quite weak, so the fourth quarter of 2009 did not have to produce huge x86 server numbers to result in an increase. At the same time, other segments like RISC/Itanium Unix and mainframes remained constrained and that exerted downward pressure on overall vendor revenue results.”
In 2010, Gartner expects a return to shipment growth in the middle or high single digits and revenue growth at a slightly lower level.
