Asia server sales growth drops in Q1

SINGAPORE--Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) server market revenues grew 9 percent to US$1.38 billion in the first quarter of this year from the same period last year, according to preliminary results released by International Data Corp Asia Pacific (IDC).

This was slower than the 20 percent year-on-year growth the region achieved in the first quarter of last year, said Avneesh Saxena, IDC Asia Pacific associate director of servers and workstations research.

According to him, server revenues for the first quarter of last year stood at US$1.26 billion, driven by the dotcom boom as well as the pent-up demand for servers following Y2K concerns in the fourth quarter of 1999.

Conversely, "the global economic downturn has affected the spending on IT and servers of several countries in the first quarter of this year", Saxena said in a telephone interview today.

China saw the greatest year-on-year revenue growth of 67 percent, or US$435 million, thanks to "the info-communications technology infrastructure expansion by government, telecom, finance, distribution and manufacturing sectors to cater to growing domestic consumption", the research firm said in the statement (see Table 1 below).

Korea was runner-up with US$313.7 million. However, revenues dropped 19 percent year-on-year. IDC explained that it was impacted by the recession towards the end of 2000, as domestic demand slumped and export growth stalled.

Singapore, meanwhile, recorded server revenues of US$76.4 million in the first quarter of this year. This translates to a year-on-year growth of just 1 percent. To this, Saxena said: "Corporations are bracing themselves for harder times ahead and are waiting to see how the economy fares before they start spending on servers."

IBM came out tops in terms of revenues generated by vendors with about US$440 million in the first quarter of this year compared with about US$344 million for the same period last year (see Table 2). "The company's p and z series were well received and contributed the most towards this growth," IDC claimed in the statement.

Second was Hewlett-Packard with US$256.3 million, followed by Compaq with US$237.7 million in revenues. Both companies registered a year-on-year growth of 4 percent. Sun Microsystems came fourth with zero year-on-year revenue growth at US$196.71 million, as it was "affected by the dotcom meltdown and economic downturn".

When asked about his outlook for the server market in the region for the rest of the year, Saxena would only say: "There wouldn't be a huge (revenue) growth this year, but a lot depends on how quickly the economy recovers from the downturn."

TABLE 1 Server Revenue & Growth by Country, Q1 2001 Source : IDC , 2001 Overall server growth over Q1 2000 Country US$M Growth PRC 435.0 67% Korea 313.7 -19% Australia 159.5 4% Taiwan 101.5 -8% Hong Kong 84.0 -6% India 76.4 9% Singapore 76.4 1% Malaysia 38.7 8% Thailand 27.6 11% Philippines 21.2 24% Indonesia 26.3 16% New Zealand 20.6 5% AP ex-Japan 1381.0 9% TABLE 2 Server Revenue by Vendor, Q1 2001 Vendor Q1 ' 00 %Share Q1 ' 01 %Share Growth IBM 343.78 27% 440.23 32% 28% HP 247.17 19% 256.31 19% 4% Compaq 228.75 18% 237.27 17% 4% Sun 197.37 16% 196.71 14% 0% Dell 39.25 3% 52.64 4% 34% Other 211.48 17% 197.83 14% -6% TOTAL 1,267.81 100% 1380.99 100% 9% Source : IDC , 2001