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Indian server market tops half a billion says Gartner

Gartner says that the Indian server market totted up to $532.2 million for calendar year 2006. 1,13,986 units were shipped and annual revenue grew 11.8 percent. As for the quarter, growth was 23 percent and shipment growth six percent.

With a shipment of 27,818 units in Q4 2006, the Indian server market was valued at $132.6 million.

“In line with the trend in 2006, the quarter witnessed increased shipment of mid-range and high-end systems, which fuelled growth as compared to the same quarter last year,” says Naveen Mishra, Senior Analyst - Servers.

During Q4, HP led with 30 percent followed by IBM and Dell with 26 and 6 percent, respectively in unit shipments.

Verticals such as banking and finance, telecom, oil and gas, insurance and manufacturing have been the key segment driving the server purchases last quarter. Linux has been making successful inroads into the market place, though Windows continues to enjoy the leadership position in the server operating system space. Blades are gradually becoming more popular, especially in intense computing environments like Data Centre. Trends like consolidation and virtualisation are increasingly driving overall infrastructure expenditure in the Indian market.

Servers shipped to China and India accounted for 57 percent of the total volume in Asia Pacific for 2006. The major countries in the ASEAN sub-region contributed significantly to shipment and revenue growth as economic and political stability improved. Meanwhile Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong experienced slower growth due to market maturity.

“In the Asia pacific region, x86 server shipments in the fourth quarter recorded the slowest year on year growth since 2002, in line with the worldwide market trend,” informs Erica Gadjuli, principal analyst, server market at Gartner. “The introduction of the quad core x86 processors has seemed to prolong the sales cycle, contributing to the softer market at a worldwide level as well as in Asia Pacific.

“Blade servers were one of the growth areas in x86 server platforms during 2006, and continued to show stable growth in the fourth quarter. HP came closer to IBM, the current market leader, in blade server revenue as well as the volume shipped. Shifting market demand away from the one-way server to two-ways and four-way server platforms was the main reason for revenue growing faster than unit shipments during the quarter. We see that dual core is becoming mainstream.”