Server sales saw strong 2010, says analyst

Worldwide sales of servers picked up in 2010, say industry analysts at Gartner, buoyed by the official end of recession, new chips from AMD and Intel, and continued growth in blades.

The number of machines shipped increased by nearly 17 per cent on 2009, and the profit vendors made from selling them increased by more than 13 per cent.

HP shipped the most and IBM made the biggest profit, the latter thanks to new System Z mainframe-class servers.

"2010 was a year that saw pent-up x86-based server demand produce some significant growth on a worldwide level," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner.

Companies kept their old servers during the downturn and then splashed out once they saw signs of recovery, said Hewitt.

The North American market grew the most at a prodigious 24.5 per cent. Asia-Pacific was not far behind at 22.4 per cent.

Latin America managed 12.3 per cent while Europe, the Middle East and Africa bumped along at 10.4 per cent. In Japan the market declined by 4.4 per cent.