According to the market research firm Gartner, server market grew by 4.5 % compared to last year while revenue dropped by 3.2 %. Since the economic recovery from the first quarter of 2009, x86 based server market grew significantly. While others like RISC /Unix based servers and mainframe market still remains dull. Among the top five major vendors for servers, HP, Dell and Fujitsu posted growth in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2009, while IBM and Sun posted decline.Gartner also reported that the shipment and revenue of Blade Servers increased by 11.1 % and 22.1 % respectively in the fourth quarter of 2009. On the contrary, the shipment and revenue for RISC based servers fell by 30.5 % and 20% respectively during this period. The ranking of regions in terms of growth of shipments were Asia/Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and the US, at 19.6, 13.4, and 9.0 per cent, respectively. On the other hand, shipments dropped at Canada, Eastern Europe, Japan, Latin America and Western Europe by 9.4, 13.3, 1.7, 6.8, and 4.0 per cent, respectively. The ranking of the regions in terms of growth in vendor revenue were Asia/Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa at 9.1, 22.1, and 9.4 per cent, respectively. Canada, Eastern Europe, Japan, the US and Western Europe witnessed decline of sales by 1.7, 26.2, 6.7, 5.1, and 9.2 per cent, respectively.
IBM leads the worldwide server market in terms of revenue. However, IBM's server revenue was about $4.1 billion during the fourth quarter of 2009 which is a 5.9 per cent drop compared to the same period in the previous year. IBM's market share was 32.7 per cent which is a decline of 1 %. System x grew, while System p and System z declined for the quarter.