Server sales edge lower

Analysts from IDC say that server sales fell in the first quarter of 2003 by 3.6% from the same period a year ago.

The largest sales were in what IDC calls volume servers – servers that cost less than $25,000. That segment outpaced other segments and actually grew 10% over last year in terms of revenue. The number of servers shipped also improved from last year by 11.5%. IDC cites IT’s interest in buying low-cost servers as the impetus for this growth.

HP was the worldwide market leader with 27.9% of revenue, outmatching IBM, which had 25.5% market share. Sun followed with 12.8%, but led Dell, which IDC reported had a 9.3% market share. Of the vendors, Dell listed the greatest growth; the company grew its revenue by 15.1%. HP and Sun lost revenue over last year.

In the declining Unix server market, HP and Sun wrestled for the No. 1 spot, but the match resulted in a tie. IDC reported that Unix server sales declined in the first quarter 12.9% from a year ago.

Linux was by far the biggest winner in first-quarter sales. It grabbed a 35% increase over the quarter a year ago, to $583 million.

Gartner said that in all of last year, 4.6 million servers shipped worldwide, a 4.2% increase over 2001. Of those, U.S. server shipments increased from 2001 by 13.8%, for a total of 1.9 million servers.

HP sold the most servers, followed by Dell. IBM took third place, followed by Sun and NEC. HP’s market share was 30% with 1.4 million servers shipped, Gartner says.