European server market powers down

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European server sales and shipments were well down in the second quarter, according to analyst Gartner.
 
While worldwide server shipments grew 1.4% over the second quarter of 2011, with revenue declining 2.9% over the same period, the EMEA region saw far worse results as the European economy continued to falter.

Gartner analyst Jeffrey Hewitt said, "In terms of revenue growth, only Asia/Pacific and the United States produced growth for the quarter, all other regions declined."

In shipments the US saw an 8.4% increase, and revenue growth stood at 6.5% for the period. In EMEA server shipments totalled more than 585,000 units in the second quarter of 2012, a decrease of 4.4% from last year. Server revenue totalled $3.3 billion (€2.62 billion) in the second quarter but this was a big drop of 11.6% from last year.
 
As in the first quarter of 2012 Dell continued to be the only top-five vendor to achieve revenue growth, with the other four suffering declines.
 
Total worldwide server revenue stood at $12.85 billion (€10.2 billion) for the second quarter, with world shipments totalling 2.36 million. In world and European markets HP still leads the pack in terms of shipments and revenues.
 
Breaking down the movement in world figures Gartner said that in terms of x86-based server form factors, blade servers rose 1.1 per cent in shipments and 7.3% in revenues for the quarter. The x86-based rack-optimised form factor fell 3.1% in shipments, but climbed 3.1% in revenues for the second quarter.

In the EMEA region, the "other CPU segment", which primarily covers mainframes, showed the weakest result, with a 37.1% year-on-year decline. "The market’s general weakness was compounded by a cyclical low in terms of the life cycle of products", said Gartner.
 
The RISC/Itanium Unix segment was also very weak, said Gartner, with a 25.1% decline, as "migration away from Unix platforms continued".
 
But despite the overall Unix weakness, Gartner said IBM continued to do well, with its share of all RISC/Itanium Unix revenue increasing to nearly 53%.
 
In EMEA, the x86 segment, although less weak than the others, also declined, with revenue down by 2.9%.

IDG News Service

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