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| EMEA Server Market Records Annual Revenue Growth of 9.1% According to IDC's EMEA Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the EMEA server market grew year-on-year by 9.1% in 4Q10. This represented the highest annual increase recorded on the market since 1Q07. Total revenue for EMEA reached $4.3 billion. Unit shipments grew by 3.4% on the same period, to nearly 650,000 units. For the full year 2010, EMEA server revenue increased year-on-year by 7.3% to $13.8 billion, while unit server shipments in EMEA increased 10.6% to 2.3 million units. Demand for volume systems continued to be strong with revenue in EMEA growing by 9.1% year on year, while demand for mid-range servers remained depressed with revenue plunging by 20.2%, year on year. High-end server revenue recorded a rebound, with growth at 28.9% annually. "The EMEA server market continues to present a very mixed picture in terms of server spending recovery, with countries even in the most mature sub-region of Western Europe showing some very large discrepancies in terms of trends", said Nathaniel Martinez, research director in the Enterprise Server Group for IDC EMEA. "Refreshes of mainframe installed base play out significantly in those differences. However, demand for datacenter optimization to support virtualization, automation and cloud strategies are also at play in some other countries." "The fourth quarter is traditionally strong for CISC technology", said Beatriz Valle, senior research analyst in the Enterprise Server Group for IDC EMEA. "But the strength of mainframe recovery in 4Q10 was greater than expected, with an increase of 62.6% year on year. These results were driven by pent up demand for CISC hardware from organizations in government and financial services, after delaying their investments during the worst of the recession. Sales concentrated in Western Europe, where all the main geographies recorded significant increases in sales of the technology, with the sole exception of the U.K." Blade Server Segment In the x86 segment, blade servers remain a key revenue contributor, as they generated $627 million in EMEA in 4Q10. The blade revenue share of the overall x86 market was slightly up sequentially, but down on a yearly basis (23.0% versus 24.2% in 4Q09). "We observed fewer large deals on blade machines, particularly in Western Europe, where x86 blade servers showed only 1.4% yearly revenue growth, versus 15.8% in the overall x86 market. IDC is of the opinion that, now more than ever, blade server customers in Europe are weighing up their choices about hardware architectures - ultra-dense rack servers, blades, multi-processor rack servers - as well as suppliers. 2011 will be a crucial year in this area, and competition among top vendors offering an array of architecture choices is expected to heat up in 2011", said Giorgio Nebuloni, senior research analyst in the Enterprise Server Group for IDC EMEA. Emerging Markets "The server market in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa continued to display very positive growth in 4Q10 as returning investments in the financial segment and use of year-end budgets in the government sector boosted demand for server hardware", said Jiri Helebrand, senior research analyst for IDC CEMA. "The CEMA region recorded year-on-year growth of 13.5% in value, with the Central and Eastern European sub-region being most dynamic, growing 17.3% year-on-year to $588.7 million. The Middle East and Africa grew 8.7% year-on-year to $432.5 million revenue, with Saudi Arabia and Turkey being major contributors to overall growth in 4Q10. As in CEE, server demand in MEA was driven by government spending coupled with infrastructure investments in the telecommunications sector." Top Server Market Findings ° x86 servers reached $2.7 billion in revenue and grew 15.4% year on year. Growth in non-x86 was flat at 0.1% year on year, with revenue reaching $ 1.6 billion. ° Mainframes (servers running on CISC processors) made a strong comeback, with demand surpassing the $600 million mark in EMEA, an increase of 62.6% year on year. RISC revenue was down year on year by 19.3%, and EPIC was down 15.8%. ° Volume servers (servers priced below $25K) posted annual revenue growth of 9.1%. The vast majority (98.6%) of volume servers shipped in EMEA were x86 systems, whereas midrange servers, which declined 20.2% year on year, were evenly spread between the x86 and non-x86 segments (48.9% and 51.1% of units, respectively). High-end systems, up 28.9% annually, were predominantly non-x86 (95.4% of all shipments). ° By operating system, Windows continued to hold the largest market share, with 44.7% of total revenue in EMEA. Unix was the second largest, but was behind by a big margin of 23.3 percentage points, grabbing 21.4% of the EMEA server revenue share. Linux edged closer to Unix, with a revenue share of 17.3%. Demand for this operating system originated largely on the x86 volume space, holding 81.3% of the Linux revenue in 4Q10. ° All form factors grew, indicating that market demand is diversifying as organizations look into different environments based on hybrid architectures. As usual, blade revenue growth was above the market average, at 11.4% year on year, but it was nearly matched by rack-optimized systems (up 8.7% annually) and non-rack servers (up 8.6% on the back of mainframe demand). Vendor Highlights Fourth Quarter of 2010 (4Q10) · HP continued to hold the top spot for the 12th consecutive quarter in EMEA, supported by strong traction of ProLiant systems on the market. It grew overall server revenue by 16.2% year on year in EMEA to $ 1.5 billion. · IBM gained market share in 4Q10 on 4Q09, increasing its slice of EMEA revenue by 3.6 percentage points, boosted by the strong rebound of its CISC server activity, which was by 81% annually. · Dell increased its revenue share of the market year on year 1.3 percentage points on the back of sales of PowerEdge servers, whose sales increased 26.2% in 4Q10 on 4Q09. · Most of Oracle server activity continued to be centered on SPARC Enterprise family of RISC Unix systems, which represented 59.3% of its server revenue mix. Revenue for its x86 systems was up 2.2% annually. · Fujitsu maintained a stable market share, declining by just 0.3 points in the fourth quarter, and with sales of its industry standard Primergy servers up 15.6% year on year. write your comments about the article :: © 2011 Computing News :: home page |