Like most of us (except the bankers) global sales of servers have taken a beating since the first quarter of 2008. Server sales have declined by over $3 billion due to the economic slowdown meltdown recession and the growth of virtualization. Today, the global server market stands below $10 billion.
Since Q1 of 2008 IBM‘s server revenues have declined over $1 billion from $3.946 billion to $2.913 in Q1 2009. Big Blues’ market share also declined from 30% to 29.3% during the same period. On the other hand, HP (HPQ) revenues grew from $2.904 billion to $3.624 billion and grew their market share to 29.3%, matching IBM in Q1 2009. Dell’s (DELL) revenues dropped from $1.590 billion in 2008 Q1 with a 12.1% market share to revenues of $1.093 billion and an 11% market share in Q1 2009.
According to the ChannelInsider article:
- No quick recovery for server sales until the general economy recovers (CI)
- End-users continue to extend the life of existing servers (CI, other sources)
- Servers remain among the least profitable for solution providers (CI: Market Pulse)
- Demand for conventional and blade servers by end-users continues to shrink (CI: Market Pulse)
- The popularity of data center virtualization technologies have had the collateral effect of shrinking server hardware demand (CI)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.