Factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew at a rate of 11.4 percent -- to $13.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2003, marking the third consecutive quarter of positive growth, according to research released today by International Data Corp. Worldwide server unit shipments grew dramatically by 22 percent, compared with the year-ago period.
According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, during the fourth quarter, IBM had a 37.8 percent market share, growing factory revenue by 17.7 percent, compared with the year-ago quarter. That growth was driven partially by a 33 percent increase in its OS/390 business. IBM was the number one server vendor worldwide for 2003, with 31.6 percent of the market share based on factory revenue.
Hewlett-Packard came in second in the server race, with a 25.8 percent share, growing revenue 9.4 compared with the fourth quarter of 2002. Sun did not fare as well. The systems maker, with 10.4 percent revenue share, posted a 1.7 percent decline in revenue for the quarter from a year ago. Meanwhile, Dell grew revenue by 19 percent compared to the same period in 2002, ending with 8.6 percent revenue share. Fujitsu/Fujitsu-Siemens posted revenue growth of 31.3 percent, and rounding out the top five with 5.4 percent revenue share.
Revenue growth was shown in all major categories of servers: volume servers (servers priced less than $25,000), midrange enterprise servers ($25,000 to $499,999) and high-end enterprise servers ($500,000 or more). This is the first time that that has happened since 2001.
In specific segments, the report found:
