IDC came out with their Q2 2012 worldwide server market revenue report on August 28, 2012 which shows that a 4.3% drop in server revenues worldwide, marking the third straight quarter of decline.

The blade server market continued solid growth with factory revenues rising to 6.3% year over year and shipment growth increasing 4.1%.Overall, bladed servers, including x86, EPIC, and RISC blades, accounted for $2.1 billion in revenues, representing 16.9% of quarterly server market revenue, a record high.  More than 90% of all blade revenue is driven by x86-based blades, which now represent 22.1% of all x86 server revenue.

As in the past, the press release did not provide details of the market share for all the top blade vendors, however it did provide data for the following:

HP maintained the number 1 spot in the server blade market in 2Q12 with 51.5%, revenue share, while IBM finished with 15.9% revenue share. Cisco and Dell rounded out the top 4 with 13.8% and 8.1% factory revenue share, respectively.

According to Jed Scaramella, research manager, Enterprise Servers at IDC,  “IDC is observing an increasing trend towards form factor specialization in the market, as both blade and density optimized servers continue to outperform the general market.  Together, blade and density optimized servers grew 15% in annual revenue and now represent 22% of the market. These modular form factors are expected to continue to gain adoption, with blades targeting virtualized environments in enterprises and density optimized servers targeting large-scale homogeneous environments in datacenters.”

For the full IDC report covering the Q2 2012 Worldwide Server Market, please visit IDC’s website at http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23665812

Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 15 years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.  Kevin works for Dell as a Server Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.