The total value of global server shipments rose by almost a quarter (23%) year-on-year to more than $10.7 billion during the first quarter of this year, research by analyst firm Gartner has found.
Over the period, IT giant Hewlett-Packard managed to overtake IBM to become the largest server vendor by market share. HP customers spent $3.4 billion on its server hardware during the quarter, giving it a 31.5% market share, while IBM’s $3.0 billion sales gave it a 28.4% slice of the market.
Gartner suggested that the drop in IBM’s share was probably the result of customers waiting for the company to release the latest range of its server hardware later this year.
“Challenges remain in this segment as the longer sales cycles that we see for these platforms are currently compounded by significant product refreshes for both IBM and HP,” said Adrian O’Connell, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The integration of Sun into Oracle is an additional factor that complicates current levels of demand. We expect demand in this segment to improve during 2010, but the vendors in this segment will be facing increasing challenges from Windows and Linux platforms.”
Systems vendor Oracle, which entered the server hardware business when it acquired Sun Microsystems in early 2010, earned close to $600 million from server sales in the three-month period.
