According to Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC’s figures the worldwide market for servers reached $45.7bn in 2003, up 3.2% from $44.3bn in 2002. Unit shipments grew 18.3% to 5.3 million.
IBM topped the table for both the full-year and the fourth quarter. For the whole of 2003 Big Blue sold $14.4bn, up 11.3%, giving it 31.6% share. Hewlett-Packard notched up $12.5bn in server revenue, up 0.7%, giving it 27.3% share.
Sun Microsystems took the biggest hit with server revenue down 11.4% at $5.4bn, giving it 11.8% share, while Dell racked up the biggest growth with revenue up 14.3% to $4.1bn for 9.1% share. Fujitsu and its Fujitsu Siemens joint subsidiary are the only other vendors worthy of being singled out for special attention. Together they sold $2.8bn worth of servers, up 5.4% with 6.2% market share.
Overall, fourth-quarter revenue jumped 11.4% to $13.7bn, representing the third consecutive quarter of growth, although a favorable exchange rate for US-based server vendors was responsible for much of that.
Without a weak dollar, server revenue would have grown by just 3% in the quarter, IDC said. Unit shipments were up 22% in the quarter, outstripping revenue growth and indicating that volume servers continue to outpace the market. IDC noted that revenue growth was seen in volume, midrange and high-end servers for the first time since 2001.
Fujistu and Fujitsu Siemens enjoyed by far the biggest growth in the fourth quarter, shifting $734m worth of servers, up 31.3% for 5.4% market share. It was still some way behind its nearest rival Dell in the quarter, although it did close the gap. Dell revenue of $1.2bn was up 19%, giving it 8.6% share of the market.
Once again IBM dominated the quarter with revenue up 17.7% to $5.2bn, giving it 37.9%. In comparison HP’s server revenue was up just 9.4% in the quarter to $3.5bn for 25.8% share. Sun’s server revenue dropped 1.7% to $1.4bn for the quarter for 10.4% share.
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Factory revenue for x86 servers grew 15% to $5.5bn in the fourth quarter, while unit shipments jumped 23% to 1.4 million. There was good news in the Unix server space as well, however, with revenue up 0.8% at $5.1bn, the first year-over-year growth in 11 quarters according to IDC, while unit shipments grew 12.1%.
IBM was the number-one Unix server vendor with 32.9% of server revenue in the quarter, with HP in second place with 30.5% share. Strong growth in unit shipments of 18.2% saw Sun strengthen its position in third spot with 27.6% of Unix server revenue.
Linux continues to outpace the market and its competitors. Linux server revenue grew 63.1% to $960m, while unit shipments grew 52.5%. In comparison revenue for servers running Microsoft’s Windows grew 16.1% to $3.9bn in the quarter, with unit shipments up by 23.3%.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
