A Good Start For Asia’s Server Markets In 2002

Revenues within the Asia Pacific (APAC) server market, excluding Japan,
grew just under one percent during the first quarter of 2002 when compared with
the same period last year, according to research and advisory firm
Gartner.

Quarter-on-quarter, due to traditional seasonality, the picture was less
rosy with revenues falling at around 10.6 percent.

According to Matthew Boon, Gartner’s regional server program manager and
principal analyst, there are a number of reasons behind this.

“Shipments into China declined fairly significantly from the fourth quarter
of 2001 into the first quarter of 2002, while from a year-on-year
perspective, China remained fairly flat. Countries such as Korea, Taiwan and India have all recorded large unit declines as well,” he said.

Boon attributed the apparent slowdown of sales in China to the momentum
caused by the build up to the World Trade Organization (WTO) acceptance prior to Q1-02. But he projects that China will pick up steam as it moves through the year.

Singapore and India were the only two countries in Asia to record a
positive year-on-year increase in the overall server revenue with 25.9 percent
and two percent growth respectively.

The strong growth in Singapore was attributed to the government, manufacturing and biosciences sectors.

Across the region, Gartner is seeing evidence of real interest at the
higher-end of the server market driven by such things as Systems
Consolidation, Life Science programs and a slight loosening of the purse
strings as corporations are becoming more positive about the economy.

This is good news because you would need to sell a vast volume of low-end Intel servers to match a single, high-end enterprise server sale from a revenue perspective, said Boon.

“While I agree this is encouraging, I wouldn’t be popping the Moet corks
yet,” he said. “We need to see positive growth for at least for two to three quarters before we could say that we are out of the woods.”

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