Server sales rocket to $12.9bn in Q3 2006
Research shows that spending on server technology has hit a six-year high
Spending on server technology in the third quarter of 2006 has hit a six-year high, according to research from market watcher IDC.
Factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew by 3.5 per cent year-on-year to $12.9bn, according to IDC, with the biggest driver being demand for blade servers. EMEA showed particularly strong demand, with year-on-year growth of 4.8 per cent.
Matt Eastwood, program vice-president of enterprise platforms at IDC, said: “Enterprise and SME customers continue to evolve their IT buying patterns based on the product innovation across the marketplace.”
Hewlett-Packard (HP) maintained the top spot in terms of worldwide unit shipments, with 28.8 per cent server shipment share and shipments growing 7.6 per cent year on year. Dell held onto the number two spot in terms of worldwide server shipments with 24.6 per cent market share.
Phil McLean, industry standard server product manager at HP, said the vendor’s success was largely down to its channel.
“HP is doing very well – the market is growing faster than we expected it to and it is growing beyond the rate of our competitors,” he said. “We attribute the growth to certain things coming to fruition within our product line and we can also attribute it to the best channel organisation in the world which keeps delivering quarter on quarter.”
Research firm Gartner also reported that Q3 server shipments increased by 9.1 per cent to two million units, and global revenue climbed by 4.4 per cent to $13bn.
Jeffrey Hewitt, research director at Gartner, said: “Blade servers and x86 servers in total continue to produce the highest growth levels within the overall market. Both of these server types show ongoing installation growth at the front and middle of the web-server tiers.”