HP has pipped IBM to claim the top spot in the server market, according to the latest research.

Gartner reported that HP claimed 29.6 per cent of the vendor revenue market in the first quarter of 2008.

The figure marks a 10 per cent increase over the same period last year, and a boost of 1.6 per cent in market share.

IBM recorded 28.9 per cent share of the market, down from 29.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2007.

Dell claimed third place with 12.1 per cent, followed by Sun Microsystems with 9.7 per cent and Fujitsu/Siemens with 5.4 per cent.

Gartner estimates that total server revenues reached $13.6bn, with roughly 2.3 million server units shipped over the first three months of the year.

"There were a number of dynamics that affected the market to produce an initial quarter of growth for 2008," said Gartner research vice president Jeffrey Hewitt.

"X86 server replacements were on an upswing as the year commenced, we continued to see build-outs of large web data centres and emerging-market growth forged ahead."

The research firm credited much of HP's market gain to the success of its ProLiant and Integrity brands, as well as a 13 per cent increase in revenue from blade servers.

HP put much of the success down to the energy and cost efficiency of its systems. The company claims that consumers are turning to its machines for lower power consumption and better value.

"With significant performance, energy usage and cost advantages over the competition, it is clear why customers continue to choose HP servers to manage their growing workloads," said Paul Miller, vice president of marketing for HP enterprise storage and servers.