The US server market is poised to recover this year
after a three-year slump, partly as a result of a migration toward
web-enabled platforms and architectures, IDC has
predicted.
The research firm believed that the US server market would reach
$18.2bn this year, representing 3% year-on-year growth over last
year, while the worldwide market remains flat.
Sales of x86-based servers running on processors from Intel and
Advanced Micro Devices and Windows and Linux operating systems will
fuel the growth. The Linux server market is expected to see strong
growth in particular, bounding 34% over last year to $3.1bn, while
Windows server sales are forecast to grow 8% to $15bn.
Although blade servers only represented 3% of server shipments
in the second quarter of this year, with 41,000 units shipped, IDC
predicted that 2.2 million blades would ship worldwide by 2007,
representing 27% of all new servers sold.
In contrast, sales of Unix servers have fallen by $12bn between
2000 and 2002, and IDC predicted that the market would stay flat
over the next five years.
The server market is also expected to achieve growth in emerging
markets in Asia/Pacific and Central and Eastern Europe,
although markets in Japan, Western Europe and Latin America will
continue to post sluggish sales, inhibiting worldwide server growth
for 2003.
Looking further ahead, IDC predicted that the worldwide server
market would achieve a compound annual growth rate of 2.8% over the
next five years, growing to a $56.6bn market by 2007.
Scarlet Pruitt writes for IDG News
Service