Gartner Says Asia Pacific Server Shipments Up 25.6 Percent; Revenue Grew 26.1 Percent in Second Quarter of 2011: Gartner

The Asia Pacific server market remained healthy throughout the second quarter of 2011, with year-on-year shipment growth of 25.6 percent and revenue up 26.1 percent compared to the same quarter last year, according to Gartner, Inc.

“We saw Asia Pacific as the strongest region for server shipment growth during the second quarter of 2011,” said Erica Gadjuli, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The spotlight very much remained on the China market.”

Internet companies in China continued to build up their cloud infrastructure, one of the significant driving factors for healthy server demand in the second quarter. Servers shipped to China increased 33 percent from the same quarter in 2010 while revenue was up 29 percent.  Other countries in the Greater China sub-region, Hong Kong and Taiwan, also experienced double digit year-on-year growth of 16 percent and 12 percent growth in shipments respectively, however revenue increased at a faster pace, 29 percent and 32 percent. Other major markets, Singapore, Korea and Australia, observed similar trends, indicating continuing improvement in virtualisation adoption during the second quarter.

All server categories, including RISC/Itanium Unix, mainframe class and x86-based, attained positive revenue growth on year on year basis in second quarter 2011. However, the x86 server segment continued to gain market share in both shipments and revenue, compared to both last quarter and the same quarter last year. This segment represented 65 percent of total revenue and 98 percent of total servers shipped in Asia Pacific, compared to 61 percent and 97 percent in the second quarter of 2010.

From a form factor perspective, high density servers (which Gartner calls skinless servers) were preferred by Internet companies in building their cloud infrastructure. Blade remained a higher growth category compared to other form factors, rack optimized and tower, as a preferred platform for virtualisation in large and mid-size businesses. HP led the blade server space with 48 percent of revenue and 39 percent of shipments.

Table 1 and 2 show the top five vendors in Asia Pacific server market for the quarter. HP remains the leader in shipments with 27 percent of the total market and IBM led by revenue with 37 percent share. All top five vendors grew their shipments in double digits over the same quarter last year. The increase of interest in and activities around cloud computing, in China particularly, benefited to vendors such as Dell and Huawei Technologies.

Table 1: Asia Pacific: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 2Q11 (Thousands of U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner (August 2011)

Table 2: Asia Pacific: Server Vendor Shipments Estimates, 2Q11 (Units)

Source: Gartner (August 2011)

Additional information is available to subscribers of Gartner Dataquest’s Servers Quarterly Statistics Worldwide program. This program provides worldwide market size and share data by vendor revenue and unit shipments. Segments include: region, vendor, vendor brand, sub brand, CPU type, CPU group, Max CPU, platform, price band, operating systems and distribution channels.

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