Year-on-year shipments growth of 3.5% has been reported for the Middle East and Africa (MEA) x86 server market for the fourth quarter of 2012.

This is according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) in an update of its ‘Quarterly Server Tracker’.

Server shipments in the North African market increased in volume by 9.6% in the fourth quarter of 2012 as compared to the previous year, says the IDC.

South Africa, meanwhile, experienced an 8.1% growth in server shipments, thanks to strong demand from the country’s government, and telecommunications and finance sectors.

"The telcos are investing in infrastructure to expand their datacentres in readiness for cloud service delivery, as demand for cloud services is picking up," says Zeeshan Gaya, research manager for servers and systems at IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey.

The Saudi Arabian market, though, was the key performer of the quarter for MEA, as the country recorded year-on-year volume growth of 69.5%.

"Along with several sizeable deals in different ministries, Saudi Arabia's healthy quarter was primarily due to a significant deal in the education sector," says Gaya.

Gulf Arab markets such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) market posted more modest growth of 6.1%, year-on-year, in shipments. Key projects taking place in the government and oil and gas sectors boosted the UAE’s server market, says the IDC.

In contrast, other Gulf Arab countries experienced declines of 9.5% in shipment volumes during the period, although revenues increased marginally by 4.1% year on year.

Kuwait was the only country that registered volume growth among these countries, with an increase of 12.8%.

"Kuwait's telecom and finance sectors contributed to the country's strong growth in Q4 2012," adds Gaya.

Despite mixed market performance across the region, the IDC says shipments of all form factors increased year-on-year in MEA during Q4 2012.

Towers accounted for the highest share of growth, at 18.0%, followed by rack-optimised and blade servers, at 15.4% and 14.2% respectively.

Following this trend, shipments of density-optimised servers were up by 9.7%, says the IDC.

Eight-socket servers took a hit in the fourth quarter of the year, recording a year-on-year volume decline of 28.8%.

One-socket and four-socket server shipments grew by an impressive 28.8% and 20.1% respectively. Two-socket servers remain the dominant capability, comprising more than half of the MEA market with 65.9% volume share.