Server Market No Longer Circling the Drain

After a dismal first half of the year, there is some cause for cautious optimism in in the server market. The descent has slowed down, according to Gartner's third-quarter stats. Internetnews reports.

The two bits of good news in the third quarter server market survey from Gartner is that the decline in sales and average selling prices (ASPs) has slowed considerably. The bad news is that both figures are still dropping.

Gartner reported today that worldwide server revenues fell by 15.5 percent in Q3 to $10.7 billion, and unit shipments fell at an even faster rate, down 17.1 percent, to 1.92 million units.

The bright side of it all, noted Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, is that the descent has begun to slow. "It is important to put the yearly declines into perspective," said Hewitt in a statement. "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."

The percentages are also considerable improvements over the second quarter, which was painful across the board, with a 30.4 percent unit decline year-over-year. So a 17.1 percent unit shipment decline is progress.