EMEA server factory revenue plummeted by 35.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2009, according to IDC’s latest Quarterly Server Tracker, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of decline.

It also marked the sharpest contraction in the market since the dot com boom in 2001, the analyst claimed.

Beatriz Valle, analyst for European systems and infrastructure solutions at IDC, said: “Conditions remain tough because customers have been limiting IT spending to the bare essentials to keep their IT infrastructure running, and this has negatively affected hardware investment.

“Recent industry moves in the form of acquisitions among IT vendors have compounded the overall market uncertainty about changes in the server landscape,” Valle added. “Virtualisation on x86 is seen as the growth engine by server vendors hoping that business will pick up in the traditionally strong Q4. But it will take much longer than that for server revenue in EMEA to go back to the peak of $5.4bn (£3.3bn) seen in Q4 2007.”

HP still clung on to the top EMEA spot, according to Gartner, with 34.6 per cent market share. IBM was close behind with 30.2 per cent and next in the table was Sun with 12.8 per cent of the market. Dell came in fourth with 9.3 per cent market share and Fujitsu completed the top five with 6.2 per cent.