AMD servers take mystery dip
Sales nosedive in Q4, despite strong growth in Q3
AMD server sales in Europe took an unexplained nosedive in the last quarter of 2004, according to the latest channel sales figures from Context.
The market researcher noted that despite strong growth in Q3 2004 for servers based on AMD Opteron processors, sales fell off dramatically in October and November.
Context monitors server sales of leading IT suppliers such as Hewlett-Packard (HP) and IBM through the channel in seven key European nations including the UK, Germany and France.
During Q3, the monthly sequential growth rate for Opteron-based servers through the channel was a strong 50 per cent. However, the market saw a mere 8.6 per cent rise from September to October, and by November the growth rate had dropped further still.
"AMD was heading towards one per cent of the server market back in July, but in the past few months that impetus seems to have disappeared - and we can't actually say why this has happened," said Jeremy Davies, senior partner at Context.
"We are now waiting for the December sales figures to come through, which should be at the end of this month.
"Maybe Intel's price cuts have started to hit back. If you look at its recent results you can see that both server and notebook chip sales bounced back."
Sales might be slowing for Opteron server processors across the board, but UK sales have stayed reasonably level, according to AMD distributor Microtronica.
"We hit our sales targets for Q4," said Les Billing, managing director of Microtronica. "We haven't seen the kind of drop-off here that Context is finding across the rest of Europe. Opteron sales are still healthy, as far as we can see."
Context added that the good news for AMD is that Opteron-based servers now represent just under one per cent of total server sales in Europe's top seven economies, a "significant" achievement, it claimed. It noted that for the first time the sales figures are high enough to be appearing on the regular monthly data collection from its panel of resellers.
HP has now taken over from IBM as the leading supplier of Opteron-based servers.