Revenue from server sales declined by about 12 percent year-on-year in Europe, the Middle East and Africa during the first quarter of 2012, as vendors continue to suffer from a slowdown in server spending, according to market research company IDC.
This was the second consecutive quarter of annual revenue declines, and the first double-digit decrease since the third quarter of 2009. Difficult market conditions compounded the current slowdown in server spending, IDC said.
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Revenue totalled $3.1 billion, compared to $3.5 billion during the first quarter last year.
Shipments were down 3.8 percent and ended up at 556,877 units.
HP recovered the top spot from IBM with 38.2 percent of the market, even though its sales dropped by 19.1 percent.
IBM didn't do much better with a 17.8 percent sales decline, and its market share was 26.3 percent.
Third-placed Dell on the other hand saw its sales grow by 6.3 percent. The vendor is benefiting from strong demand for high-end x86 servers, according to IDC.
The company had a 14 percent share of the market, which is up from 11.6 percent during the same period last year.
Rounding out the top five are Oracle and Fujitsu, which saw sales decline by 6.2 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively.
Oracle grew its market share slightly, by about half a percentage point to 7.2 percent, despite the annual revenue decline, IDC said.
Fujitsu grew its market share by 0.2 percentage points to 5.8 percent.
By operating system, Windows held 52 percent of the market, down 0.6 percent compared to the first quarter in 2011.
Linux was the only operating system to see positive growth year-on-year. It grabbed 20.7 percent of total market sales, which is a 6.5 percent improvement.
Unix sales declined 27.6 percent on the back of weaker RISC system sales, which was enough to get a 17.4 percent market share.
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