News

Overseas Server Market Sees Healthy Growth

• By Keith Ward
• 03/01/2005

According to research firm IDC, year-over-year growth in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) server market from 2003 to 2004 was about 8 percent. That figure would have been higher if not for slower growth in the last quarter of 2004, which saw a revenue bump of just 3 percent.

“IT vendors are increasingly focusing their resources on the emerging countries in EMEA. The EU accession countries specifically are benefiting from this investment; translating into strong 14.2 percent revenue growth in 4Q04,” said IDC Program Manager Stefania Lorenz in a press release. IBM continues to be the vendor benefiting the most, with a market share of just under 34 percent. Hewlett-Packard is second at 29 percent, with Sun Microsystems a distant third at 11.8 percent of the market.

Sun would appear to have the most to worry about, seeing its market share dip from 12.5 percent in 2003, coupled with the fact that x86 servers continue to cut into the Unix slice of the pie. IDC reported that pedestal/tower server sales were stagnant, while blade and rack-optimized servers surged. Blade servers were the single hottest growth area, with a year-over-year increase of more than 86 percent.

Factory revenue for Windows servers increased by 21.5 percent year-over-year in the EMEA market, and Linux shipments outstripped even that lofty figure with growth of more than 25 percent. Unix servers saw a 2 percent dip in revenue, even though more Unix boxes were shipped than the year before.

And those footsteps Sun, IBM and HP hear in the distance are from Dell, which although still a relatively small player overseas, had the most growth from 2003 to 2004. Dell broke through the billion-dollar barrier in the EMEA market for the first time, totaling about $1.2 billion in revenue in 2004, good for a 1.3 percent increase year-over-year. IBM and Sun suffered declining market share, and HP held steady for 2004, even though all three had higher revenues for the year.