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Worldwide server shipments grew at a slower-than-expected clipduring the first quarter of 2012, but Cisco, which has a smallmarket share, beat market trends as top server makers struggledwith slow demand and weak economic conditions, research firmGartner said on Wednesday. Server shipments worldwide during the first quarter this year were2.35 million units, growing by just 1.5 percent compared to thesame quarter last year, according to Gartner. The top three server vendors -- Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM --saw declines in shipments. However, server shipments grew forFujitsu and Cisco, which were in fourth and fifth place,respectively. Cisco is mainly known as a networking equipment vendor, but it alsodeals in blade and rack servers with integrated storage andnetworking hardware. The servers, sold under the Unified Computingand Servers (UCS) product line, bind systems together in datacenters. At 1.7 percent, Cisco's server market share was minuscule duringthe first quarter this year, but the company's server shipmentswent up by 70.9 percent year over year to 40,498 units. Fujitsu'sserver shipments jumped by 12.7 percent to 86,360 units. Cisco's servers were sold to a small customer base, but the growthwas in part due to some effective sales and marketing efforts, saidJeffrey Hewitt, research vice president for Gartner. "The critical element from which Cisco benefits is their datacenter penetration level in the network. This provides them aplatform from which to push Cisco UCS," Hewitt said. Server shipments otherwise declined due to a combination ofeconomic and supply chain factors, Hewitt said. Some customers are holding back for servers based on new processors such as Intel's Xeon E5-2600 , which started shipping in March, Hewitt said. The processorupgrade was Intel's first major chip upgrade for standard x86servers in close to two years, and the chip maker said demand forthe chip was strong. Server shipments were also hurt due to hard-drive supplyconstraints, a fall-over from previous quarters, Hewitt said. Harddrives have been in short supply due to last year's floods inThailand, preventing vendors from meeting server demand. Hard-driveshipment issues hurt server shipments in the fourth quarter last year, and Gartner predicted the issuewould linger in the first quarter this year. In addition, weaker-than-expected growth in Asia-Pacific and a softWestern European economy did not help the market, Hewitt said. Server shipments declined by 0.4 percent for top server maker HP,which sold 685,015 units during the quarter, a 29.2 percent marketshare. Dell's shipments declined by 1 percent to total 503,450units, and its market share also dropped to 21.5 percent. IBM'sshipments declined by 1.7 percent year over year. IBM held the top spot over Hewlett-Packard on server revenue, butyear over year, revenue for both companies declined. IBM's revenuedeclined year over year by 7.2 percent to US$3.5 billion, a 28.1percent market share. HP was in a close second with a 27.8 percentmarket share on revenue of $3.46 billion, a 9.7 percent declineyear over year. Revenue also declined for Dell and Oracle, whichheld the third and fourth spots, respectively. A surprise was thefifth-placed Fujitsu, whose revenue increased by 4.5 percent. IBM in a statement said a lot of its revenue contribution came fromthe Power Systems servers. The systems use Power processors, whichare non-x86 server chips typically used in high-end servers. IBM'scompetitors in the non-x86 server space are Hewlett-Packard, whichoffers servers based on Intel's Itanium chips, and Oracle, whichsells servers based on the SPARC chips. IBM increased quarterly revenues by 4 percent year over year onPower Systems, the company said. The company also said revenue wasbolstered by System x servers, which include standard rack, bladeand tower servers with x86 chips. Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductorsfor IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh . Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Steel Wire Rod , Stainless Steel Beading Wire for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Tyre Bead Wire.
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