HP and IBM lead server market rebound in 2010

The server market has posted an encouraging start to the year, according to new figures from Gartner.

The analyst firm found that global shipments for servers grew 8.5 per cent on the year, with all but one leading vendor seeing gains in the market.

HP once again claimed the top spot with 30.2 per cent cut of the market after a 12.9 per cent jump in revenue. IBM followed with 29.7 per cent and growth of 23.3 per cent.

Big Blue also narrowed HP's lead based on last year's figures. HP claimed 31.4 per cent of the market in 2010, compared with IBM's 28.3 per cent.

Dell was third on the list with 14.9 per cent and growth of 13.1 per cent over the year. Oracle saw the largest growth, expanding by 33.6 per cent to take a 6.3 per cent share.

Fujitsu was the only vendor to lose market share, seeing an 8.3 per cent decline over 2010 and a slip in market share from six to 4.7 per cent.

Gartner noted that shipments for x86 servers grew 8.6 per cent on the year, while more powerful processors boosted revenues by 17.5 per cent on the year.

One of the areas credited for helping to push the server market was social networking. Gartner principal research analyst Kiyomi Yamada told V3.co.uk that growth from social networking services drove demand for many of the smaller and more specialised hardware vendors.

"They have a little different behaviour from large enterprises," he said. "They build their own servers."

Yamada explained that smaller vendors saw increased demand because social networks build their own servers to meet unique requirements.

The share of the overall server market credited to 'other' vendors rose from 13.3 per cent to 14.2 per cent on the year.