Worldwide server sales continue to fall

Server sales continue to tumble, with worldwide revenue falling 30.1 percent in the second quarter to $9.8bn (£6bn). The decline has set up a battle for market share, which IBM appears to be winning, according to market research firm IDC.

According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, server revenue fell for the fourth consecutive quarter to the lowest sales tally since it began tracking in 1996. Unit shipments also fell 30.4 percent in the second quarter, compared to a year ago. First-quarter server sales fell 26.5 percent.

Simply put, few enterprises are refreshing their servers. So, what do you do amid the carnage? Battle it out for market share. IDC reckons that companies will have to refresh their servers at some point, although it is unclear when.

IDC's survey showed that Dell and IBM have ganged up on Sun, the weakest link, in order to gain market share, while HP stayed flat.

In addition:

• Windows Server revenue fell 27.7 percent in the second quarter, although Microsoft had 38.1 percent market share;
• Linux revenue fell 28.9 percent in the second quarter to $1.3bn (£796m). That sum is good for 13.8 percent market share, up from 13.5 percent a year ago;
• Unix server sales fell 30.9 percent in the second quarter to $3.1bn (£1.9bn). IBM gained 7.4 percent of Unix server market share at 41.4 percent, Sun had 27.3 percent, followed by HP at 24.8 percent.