Report: Windows Is Pacing The Server Market

The worldwide server market grew at an 8.1 percent year-over-year rate in the third quarter paced by Microsoft Windows and Linux servers who continue to battle each other for customers, IDC said Tuesday. Total revenue for the quarter reached $12.5 billion.

“Windows showed very strong growth in the quarter,” said Steve Josselyn, research director in IDC’s Server Group. “Linux didn’t grow as rapidly as it did in the previous quarter.” Josselyn noted that Linux’ growth was still impressive, though, as the volume server sector where Windows and Linux compete vigorously grew 14.8 percent.

IDC said Linux servers logged double-digit growth of 34.3 percent for revenue and 20.5 percent for units. Windows servers grew 17.7 percent in revenue and 15.3 percent in units. (The Linux numbers are calculated on a smaller base than the Windows figures.)

Microsoft Windows servers recorded revenue of $4.6 billion, representing the largest single segment of the server market. Unix servers showed a 13.7 percent decline in units shipped and had $3.9 billion in revenue.

The high tech market research firm said that IBM held the top spot in worldwide server systems revenue with 32.3 percent market share. Josselyn said IBM’s new Z9 products sold well and were responsible for IBM holding its own in the high-end enterprise server market, even though there was a slight sales decline in the segment.Hewlett-Packard held onto the number 1 position worldwide in server shipment market share units shipped recording a 28.8 percent total server market share and a 6.4 percent year-over-year growth rate for the quarter. Dell nailed down the second place spot in units shipped with 10.5 percent market share. Sun Microsystems was third with an 8.7 percent share.

In the 32-bit versus 64-bit sweepstakes, IDC said x86-64 servers experienced a sevenfold growth while x86-32 server revenue declined 60.7 percent.

“The ecosystem shifted toward 64-bit enablement,” the IDC report stated. “In fact, x86-64 servers represented 69 percent of all x86 server spending and now comprise the single largest segment of the server market by CPU type.”