Worldwide server shipments saw an increase by 1.5% in the first quarter of 2012 (Q1 2012), though server revenue was down by 1.8%year-on-year, according to Gartner.
Gartner research vice president Jeffrey Hewitt said the first quarter of 2012 produced relatively weak shipment growth on a global level with a variation in results by region.
"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," Hewitt added.
Eastern Europe reported a 16% increase in shipments with Japan posting the maximum vendor revenue growth at 10.6% during the period.
x86 servers grew 1.7% in units with 5.6% rise in revenue in Q1 2012 while RISC/Itanium Unix servers declined 5.7% in shipments and dropped 15.2% in vendor revenue against the same period last year.
Based on revenue, IBM lead the market reporting $3.5bn in server vendor revenue for a total share of 28.1% worldwide but its server revenue fell by 7.2%.
Among the top five global server vendors, Fujitsu was the only company to post positive revenue growth at 4.5%.
In server shipments, HP continued as the worldwide leader with a growth of -0.4% due to drops in its ProLiant and Integrity brands.
Fujitsu and Cisco were the two vendors among the top five to see server shipment growths of 12.7% and 70.9%, respectively.
In server form factors, blade servers fell 1.3% in shipments and grew 5.6% in revenues for the quarter and the rack-optimized form factor were up by 0.4% in shipments and fell 5.3% in revenue for Q1 2012.
