Asia-Pacific server sales robust

Asia-Pacific server sales robust

Server sales in the Asia-Pacific region reflected robust growth during the first quarter of this year, with China contributing 40 per cent of the total revenue, a research agency reported on Monday.

The 8.9 per cent increase over the same period of last year brought the total to 1.37 billion U.S. dollars, according to the Gartner study of the region excluding Japan.

"Due to the optimistic economic outlook for most countries in the region, the momentum of the markets began moving positively in 2004 and has continued through 2005," The Business Times quoted analyst Annie Chung as saying.

Telecommuncations and government sectors were the main drivers for server demand. China, South Korea and Australia were the top three markets, accounting for more than 60 per cent of revenue in the first three months. China remained the biggest server-purchasing market, posting 26.8 per cent yearly growth. Singapore's sales grew by a sluggish 2 per cent in the first quarter to 58.6 million U.S. dollars. Negative growth prevailed in several South Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippine and Thailand. Gartner attributed this to a strong rebound in the first quarter of last year, when companies did most of their spending. "The decline of vendor revenue in different markets across the region was due to fewer high-end servers being sold, a drop in average selling price and because most units were sold at the mid-low range," Chung said. The three server vendors regionally were IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. "Dell did especially well in Taiwan and Malaysia, where more than 100 per cent growth was reported," Chung told the newspaper. dpa