Global server shipments grew by 4.2 per cent in 2002, but economic downturns in key regions continued to impact on the sector's chances of a major up-turn.
Preliminary findings from research firm Dataquest suggest that worldwide server shipments totalled 4.6 million in 2002, up 4.2 per cent over the previous year.

However, Dataquest said that although the results appear to show the server market may be stabilising and even growing slightly, there were no signs of the dramatic increases in shipments achieved during the late 1990s. This, said Shahin Naftchi, senior analyst covering servers for Dataquest, was because of the continued economic pressure in a number of regions.

In addition, although EMEA ended a difficult 2002 with a pick-up in demand in the last weeks of December, Dataquest predicted revenues in the region to decline once again as a result of competitive pricing and product mix influences.

Meanwhile, Asia/Pacific showed signs of shipment growth, but the market is being impacted by economic and political uncertainty in the region, and the Latin America server market continues to suffer from the difficult economic conditions in the area.

In terms of companies, HP rocketed to the number one spot in the worldwide ranking thanks to its acquisition of Compaq. HP shipped 1.39 million servers in 2002, which amounted to 30.1 per cent of the worldwide market. However, this was down nearly 5 per cent on the combined 2002 figures for HP and Compaq.

Dell posted the biggest increase in shipments in 2002. It was up by close to 20 per cent to remain in second place with 18.5 per cent of the market. IBM took third place with 14.3 per cent of the market, on a 1.3 percent drop in shipments, while Sun Microsystems increased its shipments by 6.7 per cent to take fourth place with a 6 per cent market share.

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