The UK server market continues to show promising signs, according to research company IDC. The market grew 14.5% in the second quarter, over figures for the same period in 2002, to reach shipments of more than 60,000. However, revenues were down 7.1% on last year’s figure, at $501 million.

“Despite declining revenues in the UK, the overall picture is starting to look brighter as we continue to see the number of servers sold grow over 2002,” says Oliver Harcourt, research analyst at IDC’s European Server Group. “Such revenue declines

	EMEA top five server vendors Source: Gartner

can largely be attributed to increasingly competitive pricing and the continued trend towards lower-priced servers.” The average price of a server sold in the UK in the second quarter of 2003 was $8,325, 18% down on the same period last year.

IDC’s figures for Western Europe for the second quarter of 2003 show the server market grew 16.9% to 299,000 units shipped. Factory revenues fell only 0.4% from the same period last year, to $2.94 billion.

Its worldwide figures show the same pattern of rising sales and sliding prices. Unit sales were up 17.5% to more than 1.2 million, whereas revenues were up only 0.2% on the second quarter last year, to $10.6 billion.