New worldwide servers sales estimates have been published by Gartner and by IDC.

According to Gartner IBM wins on revenues like it always does. HP wins on units sold. Dell's market share sunk further. Ditto Sun.

IDC's numbers, which are calculated slightly differently, say that HP and IBM statistically tied on revenues at 29.2% and 28.9% respectively, and that HP sold one out of every three servers in the world, up 16.6%, faster than anybody. IBM owes eight percent of share to mainframes.

Worldwide Revenue
Total worldwide sales were up 4.5% to $12.86 billion, Gartner says. IDC puts it at a seemingly rosier 4.9%, which is actually only $12.4 billion, the best first quarter since 2001, it said. IDC has total units up 4.6%, but says it still down significantly from 1Q06 growth. Gartner has total shipments up 6% to 2.1 million units.

Gartner said IBM's server revenues were up 8.4% year-over-year to $3.83 billion, 30% of total sales. HP had $3.64 billion, up 5.4% for 28.2% of the market. Dell was at $1.44 billion, Sun at $1.38 billion, and Fujitsu and its European arm Fujitsu Siemens at $698 million. Gartner has IBM shipments down 1.1%, costing it a point of share.

IDC got a statistical tie between Sun and Dell, both at 10.9% of the market, but gave more credence to Sun because grew 6.3% and Dell only 1.7%.

Unix Revenue
Gartner says IBM pushed Sun out of the Unix limelight with revenues up 14.3% to $1.26 billion while Sun dropped 1.5% to $1.17 billion. IDC gives IBM 29.6% of Unix revenues. Gartner has RISC-Itanium Unix server shipments falling 15.5% in the quarter and down 1.5% in revenue.

Gartner says HP moved 634,000 units, up 18% for 30% of the market, a gain of three points putting it where it was in 2002. IDC says HP captured 33.6%. Gartner says Dell was at 446,000 units, down a shade from 21.7% to 21.1% and IBM was third at 295,000 units with 14% of the market, down a point year-over-year. Total units, it figures, were up 6% to 2.11 million.

IDC has volume server revenues up 4.7%, but the real winner was actually high-end enterprise servers, up 8.5%, only the second time in the last 10 years that high-end enterprise server revenues outperformed volume servers. High-end Unix servers contributed, but RISC, EPIC and CISC revenues were up 1% to $5.8 billion with IBM dominating with 42% versus HP at 22.2% - down 1.5 points - and Sun at 20.6% - up nearly a half-point.

x86 Revenue
IDC estimates that x86 system revenues, where HP is hurting Dell, were up 8.7% and sales up 6.5%, much better than the fourth quarter's 1.1%. Units were up 6.5% to 1.8 million despite consolidation trends. HP had 35.3% of the money, Dell 20.4%. IDC said ASPs held steady and reckoned that virtualization was demanding more memory and I/O, which is driving revenue gains.