News
IDC: 2Q Sales Growth Up for Volume Servers
The good news for hardware vendors is that growth in revenues for so-called
"volume servers" -- servers that cost $25,000 or less -- continued
to grow in the second quarter. The bad news is that growth rate is moderating,
according to market researcher IDC's latest quarterly tracking report.
Volume server revenue in the second quarter grew 6.2 percent year over year
and continues to be the only growth segment for the server market overall, according
to IDC. It was the third consecutive quarter of single-digit growth for the
volume server market.
Helping to drive that continued growth are corporate IT initiatives to consolidate
servers, partly via virtualization. That trend cuts both ways, however, as the
advent of multi-core CPUs drives growth in single-socket and 32 + socket systems,
rather ironically reducing the overall unit shipment growth, according to the
report.
Still, the report is good news for both Windows and Linux server vendors.
"Windows servers showed positive growth as revenues grew 3.1 percent and
unit shipments grew 11.0 percent year over year...quarterly revenue of $4.2
billion for Windows servers represented 34.2 percent of overall quarterly factory
revenue, as customers deploy more fully configured Windows servers as part of
server consolidation and virtualization initiatives," the report states.
Linux server revenues also continue to grow.
"After fifteen consecutive quarters of double-digit, year-over-year revenue
growth, spending on Linux server moderated significantly, growing 6.1 percent
to $1.5 billion when compared with 2Q05." Linux servers now represent
12 percent of all server revenue, up slightly from the same quarter last year.
Meanwhile, Unix servers continued their slow slippage, with a 1.6 percent decline
in revenues year over year and a decline in unit shipments of 1.8 percent compared
to the second quarter of 2005. Still, worldwide Unix revenues were $4.3 billion
for the quarter, representing 35 percent of all quarterly server spending and
reflecting continued IT investment. Again, a lot of that revenue came from the
volume segment of the market.
Overall, IBM maintained the top spot in terms of server revenues with 31 percent
market share. HP holds the No. 2 slot with a 28.7 percent share, while Sun pulls
up in third place with 12.9 percent, a slight bump from 11.2 percent during
the second quarter last year.
Dell brings up fourth place with 10.3 percent, followed by Fujitsu/Fujitsu-Siemens
in fifth place with 4.5 percent. Worldwide second quarter revenues for all server
segments tally up to nearly $12.3 billion, up from just over $12.2 billion last
year.
About the Author
Stuart J. Johnston has covered technology, especially Microsoft, since February 1988 for InfoWorld, Computerworld, Information Week, and PC World, as well as for Enterprise Developer, XML & Web Services, and .NET magazines.