INDUSTRY

Worldwide server shipments for the third quarter of 2008 increased 4.4 percent over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period declined 5.4 percent according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide server revenues totaled $12.7 billion for the quarter, as worldwide servers shipments reached 2.3 million units. "Server shipments grew in the third quarter, but the specter of constrained economies and tightened credit was felt in the revenue area,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. “What we’ve seen is larger system purchases in the Unix area put in check. At the same time x86 servers were able to maintain some shipment momentum, but lower overall average x86 server selling prices resulted in a drop in revenue in the quarter for this server type as well.” “Evidence of a challenged RISC-Itanium Unix server area appeared in a fall of 16.1 percent in shipments and 10.8 percent in revenue,” Mr. Hewitt said. The top 5 vendors all experienced a decline in revenue in the third quarter of 2008. IBM held the revenue lead in the worldwide server market for the quarter. This was fueled by sales of both the System p and System z brands. IBM’s overall revenue share lead over second-place Hewlett-Packard was 0.5 percent for the quarter. In server shipments, HP grew 11.4 percent compared to the third quarter of 2007, and retained its worldwide server shipment lead. The share gap between it and second-place Dell increased 2.1 percentage points for the quarter. HP finished the quarter with its shipment market share reaching 31.2 percent for the period. HP’s growth came from its ProLiant brands. HP pushed its blade server shipment share upward 3.9 percent to reach a total of 46.4 percent for the quarter. Dell and Sun both posted shipment growth for the quarter at 3.3 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively. IBM’s server shipments fell 3.5 percent and Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens’ server shipments dropped 3.8 percent for the quarter.