Server sales are latest casualty of recession

Sharp decline in Unix sales blamed for steep fall in shipments, but HP proves it can hold its own

Servers have joined printers and PCs on the growing list of hardware sectors suffering double-digit decline.

A collapse in high-end Unix sales dragged the EMEA server market to its worst quarter since 2002, according to data from analyst Gartner.

Some 705,000 servers were shipped during the final quarter of 2008, down 9.2 per cent year on year, while revenues plunged 20 per cent.

Gartner highlighted weaknesses in the high-end Unix server market, as RISC and Itanium Unix revenues fell by about 25 per cent.

HP drew praise from Gartner for extending its lead in the market, while IBM and FSC saw server revenues plummet by more than 30 per cent.

For once, those outside the top five saw both their revenue and unit shipment share grow, indicating a relatively healthy quarter for local system builders.

Those falling into Gartner’s “Others” category boasted a 17.5 per cent share of the market in unit terms.

Errol Rasit, senior research analyst at Gartner, said: “In a declining market, share growth is a key measure of vendor performance. HP’s share growth shows that it is managing the decline in demand better than its closest competitors Dell and IBM.”