Worldwide server shipments grew 1.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, while server revenue declined 1.8 per cent year over year, according to Gartner, a leading IT research and advisory company.

“The first quarter of 2012 produced relatively weak shipment growth on a global level with a variation in results by region,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner.

“All regions showed growth in server shipments except Western Europe which posted a decline of 6.4 per cent. 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.”

“x86 servers forged ahead and grew 1.7 per cent in units in the first quarter of 2012 and 5.6 per cent in revenue. RISC/Itanium Unix servers declined 5.7 per cent in shipments and dropped 15.2 per cent in vendor revenue compared to the same quarter last year. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a decline of 16.4 per cent in vendor revenue,” Hewitt said.

From a regional standpoint, Eastern Europe grew the most significantly in shipments with a 16.0 per cent increase. Japan posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 10.6 per cent for the period, a Gartner report said.

IBM had the lead in the worldwide server market based on revenue – the company posted nearly $3.5 billion in server vendor revenue for a total share of 28.1 per cent worldwide for the first quarter of 2012. IBM’s server revenue declined 7.2 per cent.

Most of IBM’s revenue contribution came from its Power Systems brand with some contribution by System x as well.

Among the top five global server vendors, Fujitsu was the only company to post positive revenue growth (at 4.5 per cent), the Gartner report said.

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the first quarter of 2012 with relatively flat shipment growth (-0.4 per cent). This decline was driven primarily by drops in HP’s ProLiant and Integrity brands. HP’s worldwide server shipment share was 29.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2012.

According to the report, Fujitsu and Cisco were the two vendors among the top five to experience server shipment growth in the first quarter of 2012.

In terms of server form factors, blade servers fell 1.3 per cent in shipments and grew 5.6 per cent in revenues for the quarter. The rack-optimized form factor climbed 0.4 per cent in shipments and fell 5.3 per cent in revenue for the first quarter of 2012, Gartner said in the report. – TradeArabia News Service