Gartner: Server Sales Up

The U.S. server market was up 3.2 percent at $4.8 billion for the quarter, compared to $4.6 billion last year, Gartner said.

Leading the market was IBM, which during the quarter sold $3.7 billion worth of servers, up 4.6 percent over the same quarter as last year. Number two Hewlett-Packard also did well, with server revenue up 11.9% to reach $3.5 billion. They were followed by Sun Microsystems, which was down 4.5 percent to $1.5 billion; Dell, which saw revenue rise 18.5 percent to reach $1.3 billion; and Fujitsu and Fujitsu Siemens, which dropped 3.0 percent to record revenue of $513 million.

IBM was the top RISC-based server vendor during the quarter, with a strong year-over-year growth of 27.5 percent to give the company a 37.7 percent share of that market segment. It was followed by Sun, which had a 30.7 percent market share, and HP, with a 25 percent market share. Both Sun and HP saw their revenue in this space decline, according to Gartner.

In the x86-based server space, HP was the clear leader with a 34.2 percent share of this market segment in the second quarter. It was followed by Dell, which controlled 22.6 percent of this segment, and IBM, which had a 17.3 percent share. x86-based server revenue of both HP and Dell rose by slightly over 18 percent over last year. However, while Sun was at the number six position in x86-based server revenue, it enjoyed the strongest growth of all vendors, with revenue up almost 192 percent over last year thanks to the growth of its Opteron business.

In terms of platforms, the Linux part of the server market grew the fastest, hitting revenue of $1.5 billion, up 31.6 percent over last year, said Gartner. However, the top spot continue to be fought heavily between Windows and Unix. Windows-based server revenue was up 7.8 percent, compared to 6.6 percent for Unix-based server revenue. Overall, about 35 percent of server revenue came from Windows-based systems, 34 percent from Unix-based systems, and 12.5 percent from Linux-based systems.

IBM kept its number-one spot in the Linux server business with its 27.6-percent market share, thanks to a nearly 30-percent growth in revenue. HP was close behind, with a 23.9 percent market share, followed by Dell with a 16.7 percent share.

While Dell's revenue in the Linux server space rose a respectable 32.9 percent to $253 million, number four Sun rose even faster, with revenue growing 171 percent to reach $68 million, Gartner said. But neither could compare to Unisys in growth rate. That vendor made its mark in the Linux server space with revenue of $6.3 million, up about 3,700 percent over the same period last year.

On the Unix side, Sun continued to hold on to the top position despite a drop in revenue of 7.4 percent over last year to reach $1.3 billion. HP was up 6.3 percent to give it second place in this space. IBM, on the other hand, was up 32.8 percent over last year at $1.2 billion.

The blade server business continued to be dominated by IBM and HP, with Dell growing strong to give it a respectable number three spot. IBM sold $177.2 million worth of blade servers, up 78.2 percent over last year. HP, at number two, had blade server revenue of $141.9 million, up 49.3 percent. Dell overtook Fujitsu and Fujitsu Siemens at number three with growth of 362.5 percent to hit revenue of $31.4 million, Gartner reported.