While prices on PCs and laptops drop, the price of servers is on the rise. Zdnet is reporting how while server shipments worldwide have stayed level, their value has increased.

 
The average server price has risen from 7,308 to $7,690 during the last quarter of 2006.  This indicates that clients want to pay more for their servers.

Analyst Matthew Eastwood believes companies are cutting operational costs that come with the fleets of lower-end servers and are loading more work onto a smaller number of more powerful servers.

 
The reason they are able to do this is because of the boom in virtualization and multi core processors.  Since these require more memory, hard drive space and network capacity the price tag is pushed up.

 
However not everyone is agreeing.  IDC says that the fourth quarter was something of an anomaly, and server price declines will resume.  Although for the above reasons they will be less dramatic than in earlier years.

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