Worldwide server shipments are picking up steam, but the heady days of double-digit percentage growth won't return anytime soon, according to market research firm Dataquest Inc. Server shipments grew 4.2% in 2002 over 2001, and Hewlett-Packard Co. maintained a healthy lead over its closest competitor, Dell Computer Corp., San Jose-based Dataquest said today in a statement.
The data suggests that while server shipments are stabilizing, there are no signs of the dramatic growth that marked the late 1990s, as the worldwide economy continues to limp along, Dataquest said.
The acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. allowed HP to vault into the lead for worldwide server shipments. The combined company shipped 1.39 million servers in 2002, good for 30.1% of the worldwide market. Dell's 851,227 shipments represented 18.5% of the market.
Dell posted the largest year-over-year increase, with shipments growing 19.3% from 2001. The combined HP/Compaq actually lost ground, with combined shipments slipping 4.6%. Compaq led the world in server shipments in 2001 with 1.03 million units, while HP shipped only 428,104 units that year, according to Dataquest.
IBM's servers lost a little ground in 2002, with shipments dropping 1.3%, to 657,895 units. Sun Microsystems Inc. gained ground, increasing shipments 6.7%, to 277,300 units.
One of the strongest-performing segments was the white-box server category. The term white box refers to servers made by small, local vendors that don't garner significant market share themselves, but when lumped together, they accounted for 29% of all servers shipped in 2002, second only to HP.
The numbers take into account servers built using processors from Intel Corp. as well as RISC processors such as Sun's SPARC and IBM's Power4. RISC servers generate more revenue for vendors than Intel-based systems, but about 87% of all servers in the market today are based on Intel chips, Dataquest said in November. At that time, the research firm predicted that revenue from Intel servers will exceed revenue from RISC servers for the first time in 2003.
Overall server shipments to the U.S. grew 13.8%, but revenue growth didn't follow suit, Dataquest said. That means the shipment growth is taking place among less-expensive systems and the market is still stagnant, the company said.
Europe, the Middle East and Africa saw an increase in server demand in December, but it wasn't enough to make up for a difficult year, Dataquest said. Revenue is expected to decline in that region, as well as for Latin America, the company said. Asia-Pacific shipments are growing, but the outlook for 2003 is still uncertain, Dataquest said.