APAC server market takes hit, but Australia benefits from stimulus

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 08 September 2009 11:05

IT Industry - Market

The Asia Pacific region continued its downward trend in server shipments in the three months to the end of June, with a 17.2 percent year-on-year decline and a total of 323,388 units shipped, although Australia showed some improvement over the previous quarter as it benefitted from the federal government’s stimulus program.

In its latest survey of the server market, Gartner says server vendor revenue for the second quarter also suffered, with revenues reaching just US$1.71 million, which was a drop of 15 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

According to Gartner, generally, constrained server spending remained in the background for most medium and large enterprises in Asia Pacific, although the company says there was growth in units shipped of 11 percent and revenue of 4.6 percent over the previous quarter.

And, Gartner says that the sequential growth came particularly from Australia, benefiting from the government’s stimulus program, with only a slight revenue decline of 2.5 percent year-on-year, but, in better news, server revenues in Australia doubled from the first quarter this year.

What’s more, Gartner says it expects the government’s stimulus plan will continue to inspire business confidence in Australia and drive further server demand in the second half of 2009.

In other developed countries, Gartner found that weak server demand generally continued to persist when compared to the same quarter of 2008, with the biggest revenue declines recorded in Singapore (-36.8 percent), Hong Kong (-48.3 percent), Taiwan (-33.7 percent) and Korea (-30.7 percent).
 
According to Gartner’s Jakarta-based analyst, Erica Gadjuli, similar to Australia, all these countries saw growth over the previous quarter in unit shipment and revenue, except Singapore.

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