European server shipments leap

Server shipments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in the second quarter of 2004 jumped 27.9 per cent, with revenue up 7.5 per cent at over $4bn on the same quarter a year ago, according to analyst Gartner.

These figures closely follow worldwide server totals, with shipments up a quarter and revenue up 7.7 per cent at $11.5bn. But whereas IBM leads worldwide, HP has moved ahead in Europe.

Adrian O'Connell, Gartner principal analyst in EMEA, told vnunet.com that Europe's figures were helped by the dollar falling against the euro.

"Prices are pretty competitive, giving customers more incentive to buy. So the figures look a bit better than is actually happening, but compared to 12 to 18 months ago they are much better," he said.

In unit shipments HP continues to outsell top competitors Dell and IBM by more than two to one. Dell increased its shipments by 40 per cent to squeeze past IBM.

In revenue HP came from just behind IBM to hold 31.7 per cent revenue market share at $1.272bn, against IBM's 31 per cent, according to Gartner's calculations.

While Linux systems shipments shot up 52.4 per cent, this was below its 61.6 per cent worldwide showing.

Windows shipments also jumped - by 31.5 per cent - with its total market share increasing to 68.5 per cent against a slight worldwide decline from 70.1 to 68.3 per cent.

"There's a lot of growth in low-end volumes, where there's a good pricing environment. At the higher end, Unix-Risc is struggling. There is tremendous price pressure," said O'Connell.

Factors influencing customers include scale-out versus scale-up using low-cost x86, and drivers such as Windows NT4 reaching the end of life.

But while such factors adversely affected Unix market share, Unix shipments increased by 15.6 per cent. These three operating systems flavours now account for over 90 per cent of all EMEA server shipments.

Worldwide, IBM leads revenue with 30.7 per cent against HP's 27.3 per cent, with HP topping unit shipments followed by Dell. Arch-rival Sun achieved the highest unit growth rate at 38.4 per cent. All four leaders saw boosted results.