IBM continued to lead the worldwide server market in terms of revenue in the third quarter according to the latest figures from Gartner.

The analyst confirmed IBM’s own recent figures by noting revenue increases from the System p and System x product lines. Gartner also confirmed declines in both System i and System z, which combined to produce an overall revenue decline of 8% for the quarter. IBM’s shipments fell just under 4% for the quarter, and it lost just under 2% of shipment share on a worldwide basis.

Worldwide server shipments for the third quarter of 2007 increased 8.7% over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period climbed 2.6%. Worldwide server revenue totalled $13.4 billion for the quarter, as worldwide servers shipments reached just over 2.2 million units.

"This quarter, the server market grew both in units and revenue, driven by x86 market volumes in the quarter, while RISC-Itanium Unix servers revenue grew at 8%.” says Errol Rasit, senior analyst at Gartner. “Underlying market dynamics such as growth from emerging markets, coupled with an ongoing demand for increased capacity, are stronger than any inhibitors such as server virtualisation. Any implications from financial market instability were not visible in the server market in the third quarter.”

While IBM was top dog in terms of revenue, in server shipments Hewlett-Packard grew 20.2% compared to the third quarter of 2006 and retained its worldwide server shipment lead. HP finished the quarter with 26.5% shipment share for the period. Dell enjoyed its second quarter running of shipment growth and grew by 5.4, and gained 0.7% in share.

Sun’s SPARC Enterprise servers boosted revenue results in the quarter which resulted in an 11.4% growth in revenue but it experienced a 4.5% decline in server shipments. Fujitsu/FSC grew 17.4% in shipments and grew 3.4% in server revenue. According to Gartner, shipment growth was driven by FSC’s x86-based Primergy business in EMEA.

Given that System i blades are just around the corner, it is interesting that Gartner singles out the blade server market as a significant driver of growth in the third quarter. The analyst says that worldwide blade server shipments jumped 13.8%, accounting for 10% of server shipment share. IBM still has some way to go here as HP retained its lead with the biggest shipment increase, a whopping 91% compared to the same quarter last year.

Seamus Quinn