According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew 2.4% year over year to $15.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007 (4Q07), marking the seventh consecutive quarter of positive growth. Worldwide server unit shipments grew 9.0% in 4Q07 when compared with the year-ago period. For the full year 2007, worldwide server revenue grew 3.6% to $54.4 billion, while worldwide unit shipments grew 6.7% to 8.0 million units. This represents the highest annual server revenue since the market peaked in 2000 with factory revenue of more than $61.6 billion.
Volume systems revenue grew 8.2% year over year and the segment continues to be the catalyst for growth in the server market overall, gaining favor with SMB and enterprise customers alike. Midrange enterprise server revenue experienced negative growth for the fourth consecutive quarter, declining –0.5% year over year while the high-end enterprise server market had similar results with –5.7% year-over-year revenue growth.
IBM held onto its number 1 spot in the worldwide server systems market with 36.7% market share in factory revenue for 4Q07, growing factory revenue by 0.5% year over year. This growth was driven by solid performance from its System x and System p servers. HP maintained the number 2 spot with 27.7% share for the quarter, growing revenue 6.3% compared to 4Q06. HP's growth stemmed from strong ProLiant and Integrity server performance. Dell and Sun ended the quarter in a statistical tie for third place with factory revenue market share of 10.1% and 9.3% respectively. Dell experienced 6.8% revenue growth compared with 4Q06, while Sun experienced a year-over-year revenue decline of 2.4% in 4Q07. Fujitsu/Fujitsu-Siemens, experienced a 7.1% increase in factory revenue holding 4.3% revenue share in 4Q07.
Top Server Market Findings
* Microsoft Windows servers showed positive growth as revenues grew 6.9% and unit shipments grew 9.8% year over year. Quarterly revenue of $5.7 billion for Microsoft Windows servers set an all-time high for a single quarter and represented the single largest revenue segment in the server market with 36.6% of overall quarterly factory revenue.
* Unix servers experienced 1.5% revenue growth year over year when compared with 4Q06. Worldwide Unix revenues were $5.2 billion for the quarter, representing 33.3% of quarterly server spending and reflecting continued IT investment in this server market segment, with particular strength in the midrange enterprise segment of the Unix market which comprises 53.8% of all Unix spending.
* Linux server revenue reached $2.0 billion for the first time in any single quarter on 11.6% year-over-year growth. Linux servers now represent 12.7% of all server revenue, up more than 1 point over 4Q06.
x86 Industry Standard Server Market Dynamics
The x86 server market continued to grow in 4Q07, increasing 7.6% in the quarter to $7.8 billion in worldwide revenues. Unit shipment growth also accelerated, growing a healthy 10.3% year-over-year to 2.1 million servers as customers continued to refresh and expand their IT infrastructures. For the full year 2007, worldwide x86 server revenue grew 10.4% to $28.7 billion, while worldwide x86 unit shipments grew 8.3% to 7.6 million units.
HP outpaced the market in 4Q07, growing factory revenue 12.0% and gaining x86 market share in the process. HP led the market with 35.0% revenue share while IBM and Dell tied for second place with each vendor securing about 20% revenue share.
Bladed Server Market Shows Strong Shipment and Revenue Growth
Growth in the server blade market accelerated in the fourth quarter, with factory revenue gaining 54.2% year over year and shipments increasing by 35.6% compared to 4Q06. Overall, bladed servers, including x86, EPIC and RISC blades, accounted for $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter, representing 7.8% of quarterly server market revenue. More than 95% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems where blades now represent 14.8% of all x86 server revenue. For the full year 2007, worldwide blade server revenue grew 40.9% year over year to $3.9 billion.
HP maintained the number 1 spot in the server blade market in 4Q07 with 47.7% revenue share. IBM finished second with 32.5% revenue share.
IDC's Server Taxonomy maps the eleven price bands within the server market into three price ranges: volume servers, midrange enterprise servers and high-end enterprise servers. The revenue data presented in this release is stated as factory revenue for a server system. IDC presents data in factory revenue to determine market share position. Factory revenue represents those dollars recognized by multi-user system and server vendors for ISS and upgrade units sold through direct and indirect channels and includes the following embedded server components: Frame or cabinet and all cables, processors, memory, communications boards, operating system software, other bundled software and initial internal and external disk shipments.
IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the global server market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly shipments (both ISS and upgrades) and revenues (both customer and factory), segmented by vendor, family, model, region, operating system, price band, CPU type, and architecture. For more information, please contact Hoang Nguyen at 508-935-4718 or hnguyen@idc.com.
Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker
