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Worst is over in Asia-Pacific server space

The figures exclude Japan from the region.

The market recuperated somewhat in the second half of 1998 but it was insufficient to bridge the deficit. This led to a 13 per cent revenue contraction in 1998, compared to the previous year in the Asian server markets.

T O D A Y

• Goldman Sachs drive • Rlys' optic fibre work • Asian server space • Mastech for e-business

Hardware vendors in Asia-Pacific had to grapple with depressed IT spending in the first half of 1998, leading to a 20 per cent drop in server revenue over the same period a year ago.

Nonetheless, IDC feels that the smaller drop of 5 per cent in server revenue in the second half of 1998 (over the second half of 1997) signals a slow but definite return to recovery for the Asia-Pacific market.

"The worst is over for the Asia-Pacific market,'' Avneesh Saxena, systems and servers manager at IDC Asia-Pacific, has been quoted as saying.

"Despite revenue contractions across the board, the reductions were more subtle in the second half of the year and the top markets continued to perform. The PRC market, in particular, continued to serve as an engine of growth, emerging as the largest market in 1998.''

Vendor consolidation continued to gain ground with the top five vendors - IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, Sun Microsystems and Unisys - cornering 80 per cent of the overall market compared to 77 per cent in 1997.

The rankings though remained largely unchanged from 1997.

IBM retained its stranglehold on top of the market with a 31 per cent market share, up 3 per cent from last year's 28 per cent. Hewlett-Packard gained 2 percentage points to emerge first runner-up with a 19 per cent market share, while Compaq slipped a notch to the third place, though close behind HP at 18 per cent market share.

Sun Microsystems gained a point to round off at 10 per cent while Unisys managed to scrape by with a 3 per cent market share.

The top four regions though consolidated, thereby driving a recovery in the Asia-Pacific server market during the second half of 1998.

Compared to a 68 per cent share of revenues from China, Australia, Korea and Taiwan in 1997, these regions contributed 73 per cent server revenues, primarily from PC server sales in 1998.

China, Australia and Taiwan were the only regions to record growth in revenues in 1998 compared to the previous year. Taiwan recorded the highest growth of all regions at 25 per cent and its market share rose to 10 per cent from 7 per cent in 1997.

The main vehicle of growth in Australia and China is the PC server segment that catered to the price sensitive market with low prices and better hardware performance.

The Asia-Pacific server market, especially in the first half of 1998, was severely hit by the under-performing Korean and ASEAN markets, especially, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Korea, which led the market in 1997 with a 23 per cent contribution, slipped to third place in 1998 with 17 per cent contribution.

The Korean market registered a negative growth of 37 per cent over 1997 figures.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, which together contributed to 10 per cent of Asia-Pacific server revenues in 1997, could manage only 5 per cent in the depressed 1998 scenario.

Together they averaged a slump of about 55 per cent compared to 1997 figures with Indonesia topping out at negative 71 per cent growth over 1997.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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