Asia-Pacific server sales up nine percent

Some US$1.37 billion in servers were sold in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, in the first quarter of 2005, representing an 8.9 percent increase on the same period last year, market researcher Gartner said.

Annie Chung, principal analyst for enterprise systems research at Gartner Asia-Pacific, said most Asia-Pacific nations had an "optimistic" economic outlook.

"The momentum of the markets in the Asia-Pacific began moving positively in 2004 and has continued through the first quarter of 2005," Chung said.

Telecommunications and government sectors were the main drivers for server demand this quarter, she said.

China, South Korea and Australia were the first, second and third Asia-Pacific markets, accounting for some 60 percent of the total server revenue within the region in the first quarter.

China contributed 40 percent of the total server revenue from the region. China had a 26.8 percent growth in server sales for the year, Chung said.

Australia experienced a 5.8 percent decline.

IBM, with a 35.2 percent share, HP, with 33.0 percent, and Sun with 9.4 percent, continued to be the market leaders, although Sun lost market share in the region, she said.

Dell followed closely, boasting a yearly growth rate of 54.6 percent in revenue to take a 7.6 percent share. Dell had 100 percent growth in Taiwan and Malaysia, Chung said.

Server revenue running on the Linux platform increased just over 50 percent compared to a year ago, with 35 percent coming from China alone.

Many south Asia countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand, experienced slowing sales, since companies had already done most of their spending by the first quarter of 2004, she said.

 x86 servers were the biggest contributors to sales in those countries. Server revenue in Singapore continued to grow steadily at two percent, with the public sector being the key market followed by banking and telecommunications industries, Chung said.

"The decline of vendor revenue in different markets across the region was due to fewer high-end servers were being sold, a drop in average selling price and most units were sold at the mid-low range servers," Chung added.

"In some markets, the variations of exchange rate might also have played a role in final vendor revenue."