IBM sells fewer servers

IBM sold far fewer servers in the past quarter. Turnover from the hardware branch fell almost a quarter compared to a year ago. IBM recorded its lowest revenue since early 2009; turnover has fallen again and again over the past two years.

Revenues from IBM’s systems and technology division fell 23 percent to $2.4 billion, or 1.7 billion euros, the company’s quarterly figures show. This mainly includes IBM’s servers; Big Blue sold its PC division to Lenovo nearly a decade ago. The global server market grew slightly last year, according to figures from market researcher Gartner.

Revenues from sales of IBM’s System X servers were down 18 percent; Power Systems sales up 22 percent. IBM even realized 40 percent less revenue from the sales of its Systems Z mainframes. In January, IBM signed an agreement with Lenovo to sell part of its server business, but that acquisition has yet to be completed. IBM is doing particularly poorly in emerging markets such as certain countries in Asia. Big Blue made a little more money selling software.

IBM achieved a turnover of 22.5 billion dollars, or 16.2 billion euros; 4 percent less than a year earlier. That is the lowest sales since the first quarter of 2009 and the eighth decline in a row. Profit fell by 21 percent to 2.4 billion dollars, or 1.7 billion euros.