IBM Regains No. 1 Spot in Unix Computer Servers

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IBM Regains No. 1 Spot in Unix Computer Servers

Reuters
February 25, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. regained the top spot in servers that run the heavy-duty Unix operating system in the fourth quarter, market research firm IDC said on Thursday.

IBM, which continues to hold the No. 1 spot overall, ended the quarter with 38.2 percent share of the overall server market revenues and a 36.3 percent share of overall Unix server revenues, IDC said.

IBM's version of Unix, called AIX, competes with Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP-UX Unix operating systems.

HP ended the fourth quarter at No. 2 in both overall servers as measured by revenue and also No. 2 in the Unix market, according to data released by IDC.

Sun Microsystems was the third largest server vendor, but it market share declined to 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter from 10.3 percent in the year-ago quarter, IDC said. Sun's unit shipments, however, rose 7.9 percent. IBM widened its total share from 37.7 percent a year ago and HP's share of server revenue inched up to 25.9 percent from 25.7 percent.

In the x86 server market, or those that use microprocessors made by either Intel Corp. or Advanced Micro Devices Inc., HP led the market with 32.6 percent share due to strong revenue growth of 13.8 percent year over year, IDC said.

A horse race between IBM and Dell Inc., the fourth-largest computer server maker with 9.0 percent share, ended in a statistical tie with IBM and Dell each holding about 21 percent revenue share in the fourth quarter in the x86 server market, IDC said.

IBM had the largest year-over-year sales growth among the top five vendors with 26.1 percent, IDC said.

Fujitsu/Siemens rounds out the top five server makers with 4.7 percent share of total server revenues.

Sales of servers that use the freely available Linux operating system generated $1.3 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter and accounted for 9 percent of worldwide server revenue, IDC said.

Overall server sales rose 5.1 percent in the fourth quarter to $14.4 billion, marking the seventh consecutive quarter of rising server sales, IDC said.



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