Asia Pacific server revenue up 8.8% in Q1: Gartner

Asia Pacific server shipments grew 27.3% to 371,060 units for the first quarter of 2009, compared to the same period last year, as economic recovery in the region continued during the quarter and firmed up business confidence across different segments, including small and medium businesses (SMBs), according to IT research and advisory firm Gartner.


Asia Pacific server revenue increased 8.8% to $1.76bn, compared to $1.62bn for the same period a year ago. Five sub-regions recorded year-on-year revenue growth, with Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), and ASEAN leading the pack with increases of 36.4% and 17.6%, respectively during the quarter. In Greater China and India, despite strong consumption of x86 servers, revenue growth was somewhat flat at 4.3 and 4.2%, respectively.


The research firm said x86 servers was a predominant platform that fostered market growth during the quarter. The product mix in this segment continued to move towards higher end platforms which resulted in faster revenue growth of 37.9% while shipment was up 30%.


Blade servers (including x86 blades and RISC/IA-64 blades) witnessed the fastest compared to other server form factors, rack and tower, with a 47.9% year-over-year shipment growth in 1Q10.


IBM held the highest market share in revenue with 39.1%, a lead of 5.8% over second-place HP. IBM server vendor revenue increased 8.2% to $690.1m, compared to same quarter last year. Dell gained the third spot with a market share of 12.9%, followed by Oracle and Fujitsu with market shares 5.6% and 1.5%, respectively.


In server shipments, HP retained the top spot with a market share of 31.9% in the first quarter of 2009. HP server shipments increased 44.7% to 118,444, compared to same period last year. Dell held the second spot with 23.9% market share, followed by IBM and Lenovo with 20.6% and 3.5% share, respectively..


Erica Gadjuli, principal research analyst at Gartner, said: “Server consolidation and virtualization still played important roles as growth engines in mature markets like Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia, driving faster adoption of new processors on richer configured servers. Demand came generally from a mix of financial and public sectors in those markets.”