Shipments of servers rose 6 percent last quarter from a year earlier, boosted by an increase in corporate spending during the peak season, market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said in its latest report.
In the quarter ending on Sept. 30, shipments from server makers, including HP, expanded to 18,949 units, IDC said last week.
That represented a quarterly-growth of 9 percent, according to IDC.
“Server shipments last quarter returned to their normal level, as they did over the past years on seasonal demand from the corporate purchasing period. But unit prices dropped roughly 7 percent year-on-year [last quarter] on fierce price competition on [mainstream] x86 machines,” IDC analyst Leon Kao (高振偉) said in the report.
As a result, by revenues, the local server market fell 1 percent last quarter to US$84 million from a year earlier, IDC said.
That was an 8 percent growth from a quarter ago, according to the research house.
This quarter, which is usually a busy period for the server market, server makers are unlikely to ship the same amount of servers as they did in the same period of last year, Kao said.
“Internet and manufacturing companies have placed orders ahead via bidding in the third quarter from the fourth quarter,” Kao said.
Kao said the growth next year would be driven by demand from large-scale high-technology companies, finanical services providers and telecoms companies as they are expected to continue upgrading their core systems and technology firms would expand production lines.
In terms of x86 servers, shipments grew 7 percent annually to 18,730 units, IDC said.
The figure represented a 5 percent quarterly growth.
Total revenues of x86 server producers last quarter shrank 3.4 percent year-on-year to US$54.3 million, according to IDC’s report.
HP Taiwan Ltd, IBM Taiwan Corp, Dell Inc, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) and Acer Inc (宏碁) were the top five suppliers of x86 mainstream servers both in terms of revenues and shipments, the report said.
Non-x86 server producers last quarter earned US$29.2 million, up 25 percent from the second quarter and up 3 percent from the previous year because of the increasing number of projects using mainframe computers, IDC said.
Server makers shipped 219 units of non-x86 machines last quarter, IDC said.
IBM, HP and Oracle Corp were the top three suppliers by revenue, according to the report.
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