Worldwide server shipments for the first quarter of 2008 increased 7.6 percent over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period climbed 4.3 percent, according to Gartner. Worldwide server revenues totalled $13.6 billion for the quarter, as worldwide server shipments reached just under 2.3 million units.

"There were a number of dynamics that affected the market to produce an initial quarter of growth for 2008," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "For example, x86 server replacements were on an upswing as the year commenced, we continued to see build outs of large Web datacentres, and emerging-market growth forged ahead."

"RISC-Itanium Unix servers fell in shipments but showed a small amount of growth in revenue," Hewitt said. "In this segment, shipments fell 8.4 percent while revenue grew 3.7 percent for the quarter."

HP and IBM continue to vie for market leadership in the worldwide server market based on revenue. HP took the overall revenue share lead over IBM by a narrow 0.7 percent for the quarter. HP had increases in both its ProLiant and HP Integrity brands, which offset some revenue declines in its other brands. This produced a year-to-year revenue increase of 10.3 percent for the period and pushed HP's share up 1.6 percent. HP’s revenue share in the blade server market increased by over 13 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

Dell, Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens, and IBM all had revenue growth for the period at 6.6 percent, 4.9 percent and 2.1 percent respectively. Sun was the only global vendor not to have server revenue growth—it had a slight decline at just under 1 percent.

In server shipments, HP grew just over 7.8 percent compared to the first quarter of 2007, and retained its worldwide server shipment lead. The share gap between it and second-place Dell decreased 1.5 percentage points for the quarter. HP finished the quarter with just over a 30 percent shipment share for the period. HP’s ProLiant and HP Integrity product lines produced shipment increases with a slight increase in shipments for HP NonStop as well. Its remaining brand, AlphaServer, had a shipment decline. HP pushed its blade server shipment share just over 8 percent for the quarter.

Dell posted a 15.8 percent growth for the quarter. IBM increased 2.3 percent and Sun grew 6.6 percent. Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens was the only global vendor to decline—it shrunk 2.6 percent.