Server Shipments, Revenue Decline, Gartner Says

Worldwide erver shipments and revenue both saw a decine in the first quarter of 2013, according to a new report from IT research firm Gartner, Inc. (IT). The big winner, however, was Dell Inc. (DELL), the only company that saw an increase in server revenue during this time period while other top vendors suffered declines. Where do these top vendors rank? We’ll reveal the answer, along with other key takeaways from the report.

First, here are the hard numbers. Gartner reported a decline in server shipments of 0.7 percent, while revenue took a 5.0 percent dive. Dell, the only top vendor not to suffer from a decline in revenue, grew 14.4 percent in the first quarter of 2013.

“The first quarter of 2013 was certainly not a strong period for the server market on a global level,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, Gartner research VP in a prepared statement.

While Dell demonstrated revenue growth, IBM (IBM) still led the pack in the worldwide server market based on revenue, reaching a little more than $3 billion in server vendor revenue. The company took 25.5 percent of market share in the first quarter of 2013.

HP (HPQ) remained the worldwide leader in server shipments for first quarter of 2013, despite the company having a year-on-year shipment decline of 15.2 percent.

Dell and Cisco (CSCO) were the only two vendors with positive shipment growth in the top five server vendors. HP remained in the lead for server shipments, but experienced a 15.2 percent decline.

x86 servers continued to outpace RISC/Itanium Unix servers, with flat shipment growth for the quarter and an increase in revenue of 1.8 percent. RISC/Itanium Unix servers declined in both shipments and vendor revenue, down 35.8 percent and 35.8 percent respectively. In terms of server form factors, blade servers fell 5.9 percent in shipments and 5 percent in revenue for the quarter, Gartner said. The rack-optimized form factor dropped 5.2 percent in shipments and 2 percent in revenue in the first quarter of 2013.

In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) server shipments surpassed 580,000 units in the first quarter of 2013, a decrease of 6.8 percent from the same period last year. Server revenue also declined, falling by 9.6 percent from the first quarter last year.

Separately, Gartner recently released its Magic Quadrant report for mobile device management (MDM).