Australia buying fewer, more expensive servers
The number of servers shipped to the Asia Pacific region in the second quarter of this year increased by 10 percent year-on-year, but shipments to Australia have taken a dive.
Despite the volume of shipments to Australia and New Zealand falling by 7.9 percent, the region posted the largest increase in revenue, up 36.5 percent compared to the same period last year, according to Gartner's latest server tracker report.
Australia and New Zealand were the only countries in Asia Pacific to see a decline in the number of units shipped but the result was consistent with revenue and shipment patterns across the Asia Pacific region -- revenue from the region grew twice as fast as shipments, up 21.2 percent compared to last year. Revenue from China increased by 23.3 percent.
Server revenues totalled AU$2.3 billion for the quarter, while server shipments reached 337,976 units.
IBM was the biggest winner in the Asia Pacific region, soaking up 36 percent of total revenue. Others in the top five include HP (30.1 percent), Sun Microsystems (13.8 percent), Dell (9.8 percent) and Fujitsu (1.5 percent).
HP took the largest share (32.5 percent) of the 340,000 units shipped to the region, followed by IBM (21.4 percent), Dell (18.9 percent), Sun (4 percent) and Lenovo (2.9 percent).
Gartner claims the total number of x86 server shipments grew 11.2 percent for the quarter and revenue climbed 26.0 percent year on year.
Uko Tian, Gartner server market analyst for APAC, said that larger revenues per shipment, which have been recorded since the fourth quarter of 2006, were historically "quite unusual".
"It corresponds to the period of product transition from single-core to dual-core. Demand for x86 products has been strong but this growth is also due to a higher-end product mix and richer configurations," he said.
Meanwhile, IDC released its server tracker findings for the second quarter, placing Sun in the number one spot for ANZ -- holding 40.7 percent of shipments to ANZ in Q2.
IDC's results confirm Gartner's findings -- in the ANZ region, overall server spending grew 28.4 percent in Q2 2007 compared to the same period last year.
Gary Kelly, head of Sun's systems practice for Australia and New Zealand attributed Sun's position and growth in the ANZ region to the increased demand for high-end servers.
"Driven by power, cooling and space considerations, this trend has resulted in a resurgence of the high-end of the market where Sun is particularly strong," said Kelly.