Worldwide server shipments up 27 percent, says Gartner

Worldwide server shipments and revenue were significantly up year-on-year in the second quarter of 2010, but there were disparities in performance across hardware categories, according to Gartner.

While x86-based servers grew 28.9 percent in shipments and 37 percent in revenue, mainframes and Risc-Itanium Unix servers fell across both categories, the analyst house said on Wednesday. The pattern echoes the first quarter, when x86 servers streaked ahead in both shipments and revenue while mainframes and Risc-Itanium Unix servers sagged.

"The x86 market is the engine of growth for server vendors and, although shipment levels remained close to 20 percent lower than in the second quarter of 2008, revenue is only 10 percent lower. Virtualisation, although a slight inhibitor on volume levels, is helping to drive richer system configurations, which is leading to stronger revenue performance," said Adrian O'Connell, research director at Gartner.

HP and Dell both demonstrated above-average market growth in terms of shipment, with Dell enjoying 23.3 percent year-on-year growth, followed by HP's 20.7 percent. In terms of revenue, the rankings remained similar to those in quarter one, with HP, IBM and Dell occupying the top three positions. However, Oracle overtook Fujitsu to become the fourth largest by revenue.

The rankings for overall shipments remained the same as in quarter one, with HP taking top, followed by Dell, IBM, Fujitsu and Oracle.