EMEA server market dampened by uncertainty

Server shipments declined 0.7 per cent in EMEA due to political and economic uncertainty, says Gartner

The server industry has endured "dampened market demand in EMEA", as it has been hindered by a strong dollar coupled with political and economic uncertainty, according to Gartner.

Server shipments declined by 0.7 per cent year over year in Q4, the analyst said, with revenue increasing by 1.2 per cent to reach $3.6bn (£2.34bn) over the same period in EMEA.

Overall in 2014, server revenue increased by 2.1 per cent and shipments declined by 2.5 per cent in EMEA, annually.

Errol Rasit, research director at Gartner, said: "Despite considerable market pressures, the fourth-quarter server results in EMEA were unremarkable.

"The region saw growth prospects related to installed-base refresh, big data projects and cloud computing expansion; however, political and economic instability, combined with US dollar strength, dampened market demand in EMEA."

He added that he expected to see similar growth in 2015, but said a stronger dollar could drive price hikes and limit spending in EMEA.

Global server shipments increased by 4.8 per cent year over year, Gartner said, with revenues growing by 2.2 per cent from the same period in 2013.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, said a variety of factors led to this strong worldwide growth in the server market.

"On a worldwide basis, hyperscale datacentre deployments as well as service provider installations drove the x86-based server market upwards. Enterprises had less unit growth impact because of the ongoing presence of physical server consolidation through x86-server virtualisation. This overall market growth developed despite declines in both mainframe and Unix platforms," he said.

The region which enjoyed the highest growth in shipments in Q4 was the Middle East and Africa, with 10.7 per cent. This was followed by Asia-Pacific with 9.1 per cent and North America with 7.6 per cent.