Server market expanded in 2005, say Gartner, IDC

Worldwide server revenue rose in 2005 driven largely by increased sales of x86-based servers, according to figures released by market research firms Gartner and IDC Research this week.

Worldwide server revenue in 2005 grew 4.5% to $51.7 billion, while server shipments grew 12.7% to 7.6 million units from the previous year, according to Gartner. IDC estimates revenue grew 4.4% to $51.3 billion, while shipments grew 11.6% to 7 million servers.

Although the two research firms' numbers vary, the overall message was the same: lower-end servers based on x86 microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices continue to outpace sales of midrange and higher-end enterprise servers.

Revenue for the x86 server market grew 11% year-over-year to $25.7 billion, while shipments were up 14.3% to 7 million units, according to Gartner. Revenue for RISC-Itanium Unix servers remained about flat year-over-year, increasing 0.5% to $15.4 billion, while shipments were down 5.3% to 460,000 units, said Gartner.

"These are trends we see continue in the market with the shift to lower-priced machines; the higher-priced machines just aren't selling as well," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research director for Gartner's enterprise systems group, in Stamford, Conn.

"Systems priced above $25,000 are slowing down pretty dramatically, as customers are moving dollars over to x86-based volume systems," said John Humphreys, program manager for enterprise servers with IDC, in Framingham, Mass.

The usage of x86 systems in high-performance computing, cluster implementations, virtualization and Web serving are among factors driving the increased sales, said researchers.

IBM continued to lead the server market with 32.1% revenue share followed by HP, at 28.2%, Dell, with 10.5% and Sun with 9.6% share, according to Gartner. IDC reported similar figures, with IBM accounting for 32.9% of the market, HP with 27.7%, Dell with 10.3% and Sun with 9.5%.

For the fourth quarter of 2005, Gartner reported that worldwide server revenue rose 3.5% from the same year-ago quarter to $14.7 billion, while IDC's figures placed revenue relatively flat from the same year-ago quarter, down 0.2% to $14.5 billion.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.