The ongoing recession in US market and the global financial meltdown cast a heavy effect on the worldwide server shipments and revenues in Q4, reveals a Gartner survey.

Q4 saw worldwide server revenue decrease by 15 percent to reach $ 13.1 billion. Shipments too fell 11 percent to reach 2.1 million units.

For whole year performance, 2008 saw server revenue drop by 4 percent as compared to 2007 figures and shipments increase by only 2.6 percent.

“The weakening economic environment had a deep impact on server market revenues in the fourth quarter as companies put a hold on spending across most market segments,” said Gartner Analyst, Heeral Kota

At the end of Q4, HP and IBM continued to occupy the top two positions as server vendors. IBM claimed the top position in terms of revenues as it recorded $ 4.4 billion in Q4. However on a y-o-y basis, the revenues were at a 17 percent decrease when revenues had reached $ 5.3 billion. As per Gartner, System z mainframe servers helped IBM revenues in Q4.

Competitor, HP too witnessed 10 percent drop in revenues on y-o-y basis, with revenues of $3.9 billion in Q4’ 08. x86 servers helped the company record good revenues.

Other players like Dell witnessed 11 percent decline on a yearly basis to reach revenues of $ 1.4 billion. Sun Microsystems followed with revenues of $ 1.3 billion at a 15 percent drop. Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens revenues dropped by 25 percent to $ 560 million.

In terms of shipments, HP topped the charts with sales of 690,000 units at a yearly decline of 1.6 percent. Dell clocked 464,000 units at a yearly fall of 7 percent. IBM shipped 289,000 units at a dramatic decline of 22 percent. Sun’s shipments fell by 4 percent at 81,000 units and Fujitsu’s shipments fell by 14 percent at 65,000 units.

In terms of server types, x86-based server shipments dropped by 11 percent while those for Unix-based dropped by 10.5 percent. Blade server however saw its shipments increase by 30 percent while revenues also increased by 30 percent in 2008.