Server revenues slip

Despite a 15 per cent increase in worldwide shipments, overall revenue for server sales is down by 3 per cent compared to the same quarter last year. That's the major finding of IDC's third quarter server report.

According to the research house, pricing pressure - particularly in low-end sales and the Asian market - accounts for the disparity in shipment growth and revenue drop.

Sun Microsystems has seen a healthy 39 per cent growth in revenue, making it the fourth largest server vendor in the world. IBM remains the most successful in terms of revenue but only saw a growth of 20 per cent. Hewlett-Packard and Compaq fill the number two and three spots respectively.

Japanese server vendors including Hitachi, Fujitsu and NEC have seen revenues drop sharply as the effects of the South-East Asian economic crisis hit the market.

Sales of Unix server operating systems grew by 7 per cent, while Windows NT saw a 16 per cent growth - a slow down from previous quarters which have seen growth of up to 76 per cent.