Gartner describes EMEA as "the weak spot for global server sales" as Q4 2012 shipments drop by -10.4% Y-o-Y to 630000 units with revenues reaching $3.8 billion with a -7.4% Y-o-Y decline.
All EMEA sub-regions see Y-o-Y revenue declines-- W. Europe by -7.9%, E. Europe -7.3% and MEA -3.7%.
"Without the strong growth of the hyperscale segment that is benefiting the N. American markets, or the continued macroeconomic growth of emerging regions in Asia/Pacific, EMEA is more exposed to the global weakness of enterprise spending on server infrastructure,” Gartner comments. “Q4 2012 ended another poor year for the market with revenue levels falling to a level lower than those in Q4 2009.”
The only server segment to see growth during the period is Other CPU (thanks to the IBM mainframe refresh) while x86 revenues drop by -3.6% Y-o-Y. RISC/Itanium Unix revenues fall by -31.7% due to the "dramatic bifurcation" taking place in the market.
On the vendor side, only 4th placing Fujitsu sees growth (4.4%) as the other top 5 server vendors (HP, IBM, Dell and Oracle) see both revenue and shipments declines.
Gartner has some hopes for 2013, but the year still promises to remain highly competitive with vendors most exposed to declining segments set to face the biggest challenges.
On a global perspective, Q4 2012 WW server shipments remain nearly flat with a -0.2% Y-o-Y decline (reaching 2.5 million units), while revenues grow by 5.1% to $14.6bn. As for overall 2012, Gartner estimates WW server shipments grew by 1.5% and revenues declined by 0.6%.
“2012 was a year that definitely saw budgetary constraint which resulted in delays in x86-based server replacements in enterprise and mid-sized data centers,” Gartner says. “Application-as-a-business data centers such as Baidu, Facebook and Google were the real drivers of significant volume growth for the year.”
Go Gartner Says Q4 2012 WW Server Shipments Declined 0.2%, Revenue Increased 5.1%
