Gartner: x86 server sales growth slowed in Q4
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InfoWorld - Sales growth for x86 servers slowed in the fourth quarter of 2006 as buyers adopted virtualization technology and waited for quad-core processors, according to a Gartner report released Thursday.
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(InfoWorld) - Swelling demand for high-end systems in the fourth quarter pushed the global server industry to its highest annual revenue since the market peaked in 2000 as IBMÂ and Hewlett-Packard held onto their top rankings. The industry overcame yet another quarter of slumping unit shipments to notch a 5.2 percent rise in quarterly revenue compared to the same period last year, pushing annual industry revenue up 2 percent to $52.3 billion in 2006, according to an industry report released Monday by IDC. The revenue came from an unexpected sector. For the first time in 10 years, quarterly demand for midrange and high-end systems outstripped demand for volume servers. Compared to the same period last year, fourth quarter revenue for high-end systems rose 11.5 percent, compared to rises of 5.4 percent for midrange servers and 2.1 percent for entry-level. Despite the changing market, the players remained the same. IBM claimed the largest chunk of revenue with 32.8 percent market share, followed by HP at 27.2 percent. With 10.8 percent share, Sun has a slight lead over DellÂ (10.3 percent) for third place but is growing much faster, IDC said. Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens was the only vendor whose server revenue dropped in 2006 as it held onto its position in a distant fifth place. Those numbers were nearly identical to aÂ server industry report released last Thursday by Gartner. IBM said much of its success came from its 32 percent share of the large Unix server segment and from strong growth in its SystemÂ Z mainframe sector, which posted its highest quarterly revenue in eight years with $1.7 billion, according to a statement by Bill Zeitler, senior vice president and group executive for IBM's Systems & Technology Group. Despite that success, IBM's Z/OS recorded just 11.2 percent market share by revenue in the quarter, far behind Microsoft's Windows OS at 34.9 percent and the Unix OS at 33.5 percent, according to IDC. Linux-powered servers showed fast growth to reach 11.9 percent share. In comparison, Sun boasted that its results were strong in every sector, lead by total server revenue growth of 24.4 percent, more than four times the growth of its closest competitor, HP. Sun said its key driver was its Solaris Unix OS, which allows to company to scale from x86 to RISC-based systems and claim market growth in diverse market niches, said John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun's systems group in a statement. Although the vendors may be pleased with their 2006 revenue, IDC warned they should be worried about slumping demand. The industry stumbled to its tenth consecutive quarter of slowing growth in units shipped, grinding to a halt with no growth in the fourth quarter of 2006. The main culprit is virtualization as corporate IT managers learn to save money by sharing a shrinking pool of hardware resources. That trend has hit the x86 segment the hardest, putting a dent in revenue for chipmakers such as IntelÂ and AMD. Â
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(InfoWorld) - AMD will delay its launch of the Barcelona quad-core Opteron server chip from its expected date in July until October, setting the company back in its effort to compete with new processors from Intel, according to analyst reports. Processor companies make more money selling server chips than desktop or laptop chips, so the move will hit AMD's 2007 earnings hard, pushing the company to lose $2.59 per share instead of only $2.48 per share, according to a report released Tuesday by Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung. "Barcelona is generally viewed to beÂ AMD's best opportunity to stem server share loss to Intel. While AMD's recent notebook win at Toshiba may balance any negative revenue implications to our current model, Barcelona's delay has negative implications for AMD's gross margin," Yeung wrote. His estimate is a larger loss than the consensus Thomson Financial forecast that AMD will lose $2.47 per share for 2007. The news comes at a bad time for AMD, which has promised for months that it would launch the chip in the second half of 2007,Â helping the company to rebound from the effects of a price war with Intel. AMD is already hurting,Â posting a $611 million first-quarter lossÂ in April, following on the heels of theÂ $574 million loss reported in JanuaryÂ for fourth quarter earnings last year. Barcelona is the key to taking that fiscal burden off AMD's shoulders,Â AMD CEO Hector Ruiz said on May 3 at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Although Intel is several quarters ahead in improving its chip manufacturing capabilities, AMD stays competitive by creating more innovative designs, he said. AMD claims Barcelona will deliver better performance on memory-intensive applications than Intel's Clovertown quad-core Xeon server chips that have been on the market since November. AMD stuck to its guns on Wednesday, insisting that it is still on schedule, and pointing as evidence to itsÂ demonstration on Tuesday of prototype Barcelona chips in serversÂ from infrastructure partners Supermicro Computer, Tyan Computer, and Uniwide Technologies at theÂ Computex trade show in Taipei. "We remain on track for a summer 2007 launch with partners shipping platforms in the third quarter," said AMD spokeswoman Marian Kelley. She blamed the delay rumors on Cray's announcement Monday that it expects revenue to drop because of a delay in shipping its quad-core Cray XT4 systems. In fact, Cray was referring to AMD's midrange Budapest processor, not Barcelona, she said. "The guidance that we've been giving and that we're sticking to is that Budapest will follow Barcelona in the second half of 2007," Kelley said. Despite AMD's assurances, other analysts echoed the Citigroup report, saying they have heard similar news from server vendors, distributors and board makers. On May 30, another report called AMD's promise to launch Barcelona in mid-2007 "a head fake" since the chip will not be available at full volume until August at the earliest, according to a note from analyst Patrick Wang at Thomas Weisel Partners. In contrast, Intel is expected to succeed in shipping its Penryn processors in the late third quarter or early fourth quarter. That timing will allow Intel to essentially catch up to AMD and soften the blow of losing sales to customers who see a performance advantage in Barcelona, Wang said.
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(InfoWorld) - Lower prices and the improved performance of laptops will fuel continued growth in PC sales this year and next, despite concerns a recession could be on the horizon for the U.S., market analyst Gartner predicted Thursday. Worldwide PC shipments will grow 12.3 percent this year, dropping slightly to 11 percent growth in 2008, Gartner said. Emerging markets will drive desktop PC sales, which will also be boosted by the start of a new replacement cycle through the end of the year. Emerging markets will average 18.6 percent growth in unit sales, while mature markets will see 7 percent growth, Gartner said. The recent economic turbulence, caused in part by problems in the U.S. mortgage markets, should not affect PC shipments in the coming months. However, Gartner warned that PC vendors should closely look at their supply chain in case conditions change.
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Global revenue from server sales climbed to $11.5 billion in the second quarter, according to new data from Gartner. This represents a 7.7 percent revenue increase over the same period last year, the market researcher said Wednesday.
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Low-cost Linux and Windows servers are outselling Unix models, Gartner analysts say.
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U.S. video game industry sales growth  is expected to slow in 2008 as accelerated demand for software  is tempered by a decline in hardware revenue, the Consumer  Electronics Association said on Saturday.
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Computer server sales in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan grew by a brisk 12.4 percent to 1.37 billion US dollars in the second quarter after a gain of 9.6 percent in the three months to March, an industry monitor said.
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InfoWorld - Swelling demand for high-end systems in the fourth quarter pushed the global server industry to its highest annual revenue since the market peaked in 2000 as IBM&#160;and Hewlett-Packard held onto their top rankings.
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SEQUENTIAL server revenue at Sun Microsystems has grown faster than the overall market, the firm claimed today. Citing a Gartner Dataquest report, Sun claimed that in the second calendar quarter of this year
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U.S. video game industry sales growth is expected to slow in 2008 as accelerated demand for software is tempered by a decline in hardware revenue, the Consumer Electronics Association said on Saturday.
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Ziff Davis - According to Gartner, worldwide server revenue increased in the second quarter by 7.7 percent over the year-ago period,  and server shipments jumped 24.5 percent.
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The year just ending has been a tough one for enterprise vendors of all stripes. It has been particularly challenging for the nascent supply-chain visibility field. Unfortunately, 2005 will bring more challenges and continued slow software sales, predicts Forrester Research's Noha Tohamy.
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August 26, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Research and analysis firm Gartner  said on Wednesday that global sales of servers surpassed $11.
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(InfoWorld) - Falling prices for DRAM chips and microprocessors badly hurt the global semiconductor market, which will likely limp to a sales increase of just 2.5 percent in 2007, according to an analyst report released Thursday. Semiconductor sales were originally expected to rise by 6.4 percent over 2006 levels, according to the study from Gartner. But chip sales in the first quarter of 2007 were more than 5 percent lower than in the fourth quarter of 2006, leading the research company to cut its 2007 market revenue forecast to $269.2 billion. The numbers reflect a continuingÂ price war between Intel and Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD), as the processor vendors struggle for market share. That war has already taken a toll on AMD, which blamed slow chip sales for itsÂ $611 million lossÂ in the first quarter of 2007. Intel, a much larger company, has continued to post profitable quarters, but on May 2 addedÂ another 1,000 layoffsÂ to a corporate reorganization it began in 2006. Conditions areÂ worst of all in the DRAM sectorÂ of the industry, which will see its revenue drop 11.1 percent in 2007 to $30.5 billion, then limp to a smaller decline in 2008, according to Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. The forecast could spell trouble for Samsung Electronics, the world's largest producer of DRAM and NAND flash. However,Â Samsung's pain may be dulledÂ if tumbling chip prices attract consumers into stores, as prices for end-user products using NAND flash memory like PCs, iPods and digital cameras are also expected to drop. In the long run, chip prices will continue to fall throughout 2007 as semiconductor manufacturers try to clear excess chips out of their warehouses, Gordon said. Chip manufacturers do have some cause for optimism, however, as they have already begun to control that inventory by cutting production. If that effort succeeds, the industry could return to modest growth of 8.7 percent in 2008 and 7.2 percent in 2009, he added. Â
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Buyers are waiting for quad-core machines and need fewer servers in general, in part because of virtualization, Gartner says.
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Seeing red over Budapest Cray has blamed delayed shipments of Opteron-based servers for a likely massive fall in 2007 revenue.â¦