Pain In Server Sales is Spreading
The outlook for the computer market keeps getting darker. On Monday, a Morgan Stanley report provided more evidence PC sales are shriveling. Now the despair is spreading in the data center.
IDC, the market-research firm, on Wednesday is reporting that revenue in the worldwide market for server systems dropped 14% in the fourth quarter from the same period a year earlier. The sinking tide grounded all four major server makers, which are listed here with their revenue declines in order of market share: IBM, off 15%, Hewlett-Packard, off 10.1%, Dell, off 9.9% and Sun Microsystems, off 14.1%.
It’s an abrupt about-face from a year ago, when companies were stocking up on hardware to cope with steadily increasing e-mail and Internet traffic. Growth continued for the first half of 2008, but hit a wall in third quarter, when revenue declined 5.2% - an early hint of where the market was heading. October sales also fell slightly, but business deteriorated rapidly in the rest of the fourth quarter.
“It appears that the quarter weakened for everyone as it progressed,” says Matt Eastwood, and IDC analyst.
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