Gartner Says Worldwide Server Market Showing Signs of Stabilization In Spite Of Yearly Declines in Shipments of 17.1 Percent and Revenues of 15.5 Percent

Press release

Worldwide server shipments for the third quarter of 2009 dropped 17.1 percent over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period declined 15.5 percent according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide server revenues totaled $10.7 billion for the quarter, as worldwide servers shipments reached 1.2 million units.

"It is important to put the yearly declines into perspective," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "Looking at the third quarter results from the sequential perspective, they showed an increase of 13.8 percent in shipments and 10.2 percent in revenues when compared to the second quarter of this year. That suggests that the market as a whole is showing signs of stabilization as we move toward the end of 2009."

IBM held the revenue lead in the worldwide server market for the quarter (see Table 1). IBM's overall revenue share lead over second-place HP was 1.5 percent for the quarter. Four of the top 5 vendors posted double-digit declines in revenue year over year. However, all of the top tier vendors experienced sequential revenue growth, except for Sun Microsystems.

Table 1
Worldwide: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 3Q09 (U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner (November 2009)

In server shipments, Hewlett-Packard retained its worldwide server shipment lead, as its market share reached 32.1 percent in the third quarter of 2009. Dell maintained the No. 2 ranking as its share totaled 22.8 percent (see Table 2). HP's shipment performance was driven primarily by its ProLiant brands.

While the global server providers all posted year-on-year shipment declines for the quarter, all of the vendors experienced sequential shipment increases for the period.

Table 2
Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipment Estimates, 3Q09 (Units)

Source: Gartner (November 2009)