Gartner Says Worldwide Server Shipments Grew 27 Percent and Revenue Increased 14 Percent in the Second Quarter of 2010

Press release

STAMFORD, Conn., August 25, 2010 -    Worldwide server shipments grew 27.1 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2010, while revenue climbed 14.3 percent, according to Gartner, Inc.

"As in the first quarter, the second quarter again demonstrated strong year-on-year growth," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "There remained some regional variations, but all geographies demonstrated improving market conditions."

"x86-based servers grew 28.9 percent in units in the second quarter and 37.0 percent in revenues. RISC/Itanium Unix servers remained constrained, with declines of 16.5 percent in shipments and decreases of 8.8 percent in vendor revenues, compared to the same quarter last year. The 'other' CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, fell 22.8 percent in revenues for the quarter," Mr. Hewitt said.

From the regional standpoint, Eastern Europe grew the most significantly in server shipments, with a 46.9 percent increase in the second quarter of 2010, as well as the highest vendor revenue growth, at 26.2 percent for the period. All other regions had varying shipment and revenue increases.

HP led the worldwide server market based on revenue (see Table 1) - the company posted just over $3.5 billion in server vendor revenue, and accounted for 32 percent of worldwide server revenue for the second quarter of 2010. HP's share was up 3.1 percent year-on-year.

Of the top five global vendors, Dell, Fujitsu and HP all had revenue increases for the second quarter of 2010.

Table 1
Worldwide: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 2Q10 (U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner (August 2010)

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the second quarter of 2010 (see Table 2) with its market share totaling 30 percent, as shipments increased 23.3 percent over the same period last year. This growth was driven by increased produced from HP's ProLiant brand.

Of the top five vendors in server shipments worldwide, Dell, Fujitsu, HP and IBM posted increases in units for the second quarter.

As noted above, the primary driver of the market growth for the quarter remained the x86-based server hardware platform, as it was in the first quarter - there was a marked difference between x86-based servers and non-x86 server platforms for the quarter, with the latter platforms remaining constrained overall. Blade severs had the strongest growth of any form factor, with an increase of 17.8 percent in units and 32.8 percent in vendor revenue for the first quarter.

Table 2
Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipments Estimates, 2Q10 (Units)

Source: Gartner (August 2010)