IDC: Big drop in server revenue in Q4

In a survey released mid-week, IDC said that worldwide server revenue in the last quarter of 2008 saw its largest drop in years. Server revenue fell to $13.5 billion, or a 14 percent year-over-year decline. Unsurprisingly, this was fueled by a drop in server shipments, which fell 12 percent to 1.9 million units. 

Matthew Eastwood, group vice president of IDC's Enterprise Platforms Group painted a picture of sharp decline in server shipment across the globe, labeling it as the sharpest decline since the "middle of the dot-com slowdown." In a statement, he wrote, "All server vendors, geographies, and technology segments were impacted significantly as the global recession gained momentum and market conditions weakened as the quarter progressed."

Eastwood does not expect the slowdown to improve until late 2009 or early 2010, and is expected to worsen further before showing any improvements. All is not gloom though, and virtualization and blade systems will probably see strong demand as users continue to invest in them to reduce operating costs. 

Reflecting the trend, vanilla x86 servers--ranging from low-, mid- to high-end kits--saw large revenue declines during the quarter. On the other hand, revenue from blade servers actually saw a 16.1 percent growth quarter-on-quarter.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Network World

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