Global server shipments fell 17.1% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2009, with the revenue that vendors earned from those shipments falling 15.5% over the same period, according to the latest figures from analyst company Gartner.

Sequentially, however, server shipments grew 13.8% globally and revenues grew by 10.2%. Those figures were better than had been previously predicted.

“The market as a whole is showing signs of stabilisation as we move towards the end of 2009,” said Gartner research vice president Jeffrey Hewitt.

By revenue, IBM dominated the worldwide server market with 31.7% market share. As measured by shipments, however, Hewlett-Packard held the market share lead with 616,000 servers shipped.

The top five hardware vendors saw double-digit declines in server revenue, with the exception of Dell, whose decline was only 5.1%, a rare piece of good news for the company. Sequentially, though, all vendors saw server revenues grow, again with one exception: Sun Microsystems.

The uncertainty surrounding Sun’s future, caused by the EC’s delay in granting software giant Oracle approval to acquire the company, has prompted many customers to look elsewhere for their hardware requirements.