Server Revenues Continue to Decline in 3Q13

The global market for servers continues to experience revenue decreases, even as the volume of servers shipping is rising. Both Gartner and IDC released their respective third quarter 2013 (3Q13) worldwide server reports this week, showing which areas of the server market are growing and which ones are in decline.

IDC reported that the global server market had revenues of $12.01 billion in 3Q13, for a 3.7 percent year-over-year decline. Gartner’s report has 3Q13 server revenue coming in at $12.3 billion, for a 2.1 percent year-over-year decline.

“The worldwide server market remains in a relatively weak performance mode as we move through the second half of the year,” Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement.

In terms of server shipments, IDC has the volume at 2.3 million units for flat year-over-year growth while Gartner saw 2.5 million servers shipped for a modest 1.9 percent year-over-year gain.

In terms of server architecture, IDC reported that the x86 server market had 3Q13 revenue of $9.5 billion, representing a 2.8 percent yearly gain. Gartner in contrast pegged x86 revenue growth at 4.4 percent.

Both IDC and Gartner have HP as the top server vendor in the world by revenue. IDC reported that HP held 28.1 percent of server revenues, for a 1.5 percent year-over-year gain. Gartner has HP’s server revenue share at 27.6 percent on a 2.2 percent year-over-year gain.

IBM holds the number two spot, with a declining revenue growth of negative 19.4 percent according to IDC and negative 18.9 percent according to Gartner.

In third place is Dell, which also experienced a revenue decline of negative 6 percent according to IDC and negative 3.5 percent according to Gartner.

Some of the biggest declines during the quarter were felt in the Unix server space, which has now hit all-time lows. According to IDC, Unix server revenues for 3Q13 fell to $1.3 billion, for a 31.3 percent year-over-year decline.

IDC also saw softness in Microsoft’s Windows Server, with revenue of $6.1 billion, down by 1.3 percent on a year-over-year basis. In contrast, IDC is seeing continued growth from Linux, with revenue coming in at 3.4 billion for a 5.6 percent gain.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at ServerWatch and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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