The worldwide server shipments increased by 1.5 per cent and the server revenue declined by 0.6 per cent in 2012: Gartner
According to the global research firm Gartner, in the year 2012 the server shipments increased by 1.5 per cent, whereas the server revenue declined by 0.6 per cent.
Further, in the fourth quarter of 2012, worldwide server shipments declined by 0.2 per cent year-on-year, while revenue increased by 5.1 percent as compared to the fourth quarter of 2011.
Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president, Gartner, says, ?2012 was a year that definitely saw budgetary constraint which resulted in delays in x86-based server replacements in enterprise and mid-sized data centers. Application-as-a-business data centers such as Baidu, Facebook and Google were the real drivers of significant volume growth for the year.?
He adds, ?Relatively weak mainframe and RISC/Itanium Unix platform market performance kept overall revenue growth in check.?
From a geographic perspective, the highest growth rates in terms of unit shipments for servers were registered by North America (5.5 per cent), Asia/Pacific (3.4 per cent) and Latin America (0.2 per cent, respectively). Globally, these were the only regions to have registered an increase in the shipments of servers in 2012.
According to Gartner, IBM extended its lead in the worldwide server market based on revenue in the fourth quarter of 2012. For the period under review, IBM?s server revenue stood at $5.1 billion with a global server market share of 34.9 per cent.
Three of the top five global server vendors experienced revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2012, with IBM registering the strongest growth rate of 8.9 per cent, while Oracle registered the steepest revenue decline of 18 per cent.
