Worldwide Server Market Slows in Fourth Quarter But Grows to $51.3 Billion in 2005, Highest Revenues in 5 Years

IDC: worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market declined 0.2% year over year to $14.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005. This was the first year-over-year quarterly decline in revenue since the first quarter of 2003, as year-over-year quarterly compares become more difficult. worldwide server unit shipments growth slowed modestly to 10.6% in 4Q05 when compared with the year-ago period.

Volume systems grew 7.3% year over year and the segment continue to be the catalyst for growth for the server market overall, gaining favor with SMB and enterprise customers alike. After four consecutive quarterly increases, revenue for midrange enterprise servers declined 11.5% year over year and the high-end enterprise server market showed a 1.7% decline year over year, the fifth consecutive quarter of declining revenue for high-end enterprise servers.

The volume server market continues to evolve as richer server configurations driven by both scale-out cluster implementations and scale-up server virtualization initiatives continue to drive increased customer spending. However, even in the volume segment, the quarterly unit shipment growth of 11.5% was two-thirds the year-over-year unit growth rate observed in 4Q04, illustrating a transition towards more richly configured systems in the market. This evolution is driven by IT managers increased desire to consolidate and virtualize their server infrastructures as they seek to maintain balanced and manageable IT growth in the future.

• The Windows server market continued to show solid growth, with factory revenues increasing by 4.7% year over year. Overall, Windows servers accounted for $4.9 billion in 4Q05, representing 33.6% of quarterly server market revenue. For all of 2005, Windows server revenues were $17.7 billion, which means that for the first time the Windows server segment modestly exceeded spending for Unix servers as customers deployed more fully configured Windows servers in support of scalable enterprise workloads and server virtualization projects.

• Linux servers generated $1.6 billion in quarterly revenue, the fourteenth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with year-over-year revenue growth of 20.8%. For the full year, Linux server revenues were $5.7 billion, placing it in third place for the first time from an operating system perspective as customers continued to expand the role of Linux servers into an increasingly wider array of commercial and technical workloads.

• Unix servers experienced a 5.9% decline in factory revenue year over year to $5.0 billion for the quarter with worldwide Unix revenues for the quarter representing 34.3% of overall quarterly factory revenue. For all of 2005, Unix server revenues were $17.5 billion, moving the platform from sole possession of first place from an operating system perspective for the first time in more than a decade.

Each platform offers its own advantages in terms of workloads and customer preferences, and there is substantial overlap in terms of ISV applications that run on many of these server platforms. Although the trend is towards volume systems, we do not believe that any one platform will be in a position to force another platform out of the marketplace for many years to come.

• IBM retained the number 1 spot in the worldwide server systems market with 38.4% market share in factory revenue, growing its revenue by 0.8% when compared to the same quarter one year ago. HP continued to hold the number 2 spot in terms of factory revenue with 26.8% share, growing revenue 3.8% compared to 4Q04 and gaining 1 point of market share overall.

• Dell maintained third place with 9.6% factory revenue market share in 4Q05. Dell experienced 7.3% revenue growth compared with 4Q04, while fourth place Sun experienced a year-over-year revenue decline of 10.9% in 4Q05 to 8.2% market share.

• Fujitsu/Fujitsu-Siemens earned a fifth place standing in terms of factory revenue with 4.3% market share. The Fujitsu Group of companies saw a 10.9% factory revenue decline year over year.

• In terms of unit shipments, HP maintained the number 1 position worldwide with 30.2% server shipment share, growing shipments 8.8% year over year. Dell maintained the number 2 spot in terms of worldwide server shipments with 23.3% share, up from 21.3%.

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More: IDC worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, February 2006 Publ 20060222