Server sales up for the second quarter

Worldwide server shipments for the second quarter of 2007 increased 2.7% over the same quarter last year, and worldwide server sales for the same period climbed 5.1%, said analyst Gartner.

Gartner said worldwide server sales totalled £6.5bn for the quarter, as shipments reached just over 2 million units.

"The x86-based server area was the real growth contributor," said Jeffrey Hewitt, an analyst at Gartner. "A strong underlying demand for increased capacity and new applications is driving volume growth despite potential inhibitors like virtualisation and economic concerns."

He said, "Risc-Itanium Unix servers continued to be constrained. In this segment, shipments fell 18% and sales fell 1.5% for the quarter."

IBM is the leading server supplier by revenue and HP is the market leader when it comes to the number of shipments, said Gartner.