It was certainly not created for server virtualization, though that may be the primary use with present-day Qemu.
I mostly use Qemu for cross-architecture emulation, where the convenience to simulate certain embedded architectures and devices makes it very interesting to use. The integrated GDB server is also very neat, especially for kernel debugging.
Flashing and testing embedded devices is cumbersome, so using an emulator is preferable to speed up the code-build-test-debug loop. Runtime speed is not always that important.
I mostly use Qemu for cross-architecture emulation, where the convenience to simulate certain embedded architectures and devices makes it very interesting to use. The integrated GDB server is also very neat, especially for kernel debugging.
Flashing and testing embedded devices is cumbersome, so using an emulator is preferable to speed up the code-build-test-debug loop. Runtime speed is not always that important.