Worldwide server revenue surpassed $11.8 billion in the third quarter of 2004, a 6% increase from the third quarter of 2003, according to Gartner. The research firm shows x86 processors gain and RISC systems decline trend during the last 12 months.

“The server market is still being primarily driven by the x86 segment. That, along with the acceptance of Linux in additional application areas in the enterprise space will continue to drive demand,” said Mike McLaughlin, principal analyst for Gartner.

Dell’s Server Share Skyrockets

IBM held its lead based on server revenue, as its market share remained at 32% in the third quarter of 2004. Dell continues to lead all major vendors in growth, as this quarter Dell had 17% revenue growth, overtaking Sun Microsystems for the third spot overall.

Worldwide server shipments surpassed 1.6 million units in the third quarter of 2004, a 16.3% increase from the same period last year. HP led all vendors with 468,924 units shipped in the third quarter. Dell experienced the strongest growth rate among the top 5 vendors, as shipments increased 25% from last year.

Linux Continues to Occupy Market

Linux continued to be the growth leader among operating systems (OS) in both revenue and units. Linux grew revenue 55.7% from last year, and increased units by 45.2%. Windows gained another 2 points in market share for all operating systems over the third quarter of 2003, earning 36.5 percent of all revenue, or about $4.3 billion for the quarter.

Both Unix and “Other OS” categories continues their slow decline, with a revenue decreasing 3.6% for Unix, and 5.8% for “Other OS” in the third quarter. Both OS categories lost 3 points of market share.

x86 Keep On Growing

Gartner will now track x86-32 and x86-64 CPU based servers as “x86”. With the emergence of Intel’s EM64T processor to compete with AMD’s Opteron, the x86 market is slowly shifting from 32-bit to 64-bit enabled. This market grew 14% in revenue and 18% in shipments on a worldwide level in the third quarter of 2004. RISC systems was the only CPU category that showed a year-over-year decline, with revenue down 10% down to $4 billion in the third quarter of 2004.

468 Thousands Servers Shipped in EMEA in Q3 2004

In Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA), the server revenue market reached $3.5 billion in the third quarter of 2004, a 3% increase from the third quarter of 2003. Shipments totalled 468 thousand units, a 19% increase from the third quarter of 2004.

According to Adrian O'Connell, principal analyst at Gartner in EMEA, “Although shipment growth dipped below the twenty percent level for the first time in six consecutive quarters, this was still a very positive quarter. The replacement cycle continues to drive volumes, but we are seeing indications of strength across the market. Demand was particularly strong in Spain, Switzerland and Eastern Europe.”

The x86 segment was also strong in EMEA. Revenues in this segment grew by 18% compared to the same quarter last year. The higher end of the market was weaker, with the Unix market declining by 6% in revenues, although results varied significantly between the vendors.