Windows computer servers tie with Unix in revenue

Stan Beer
Monday, 30 May 2005 11:10

IT Industry - Development

The worldwide computer server market grew 5.3 percent to US$12.1 billion in the first quarter, with revenue for servers running the Microsoft Windows operating system equalling that of Unix servers for the first time, market research firm IDC said.

Reuters reports in the New York Times (28 May) that revenue for Windows servers grew 12.3 percent to US$4.2 billion in the quarter while unit shipments grew 10.7 percent. Unix servers saw 2.8 percent revenue growth to US$4.2 billion while unit shipments increased 5 percent.

According to the Reuters/NYT report, IDC said that overall server revenue grew for the eighth consecutive quarter as customers invest further in new infrastructure. But the rate of growth has slowed, with unit shipment growth of 13.5 percent at its lowest point in two years due to moderating growth in the volume server segment and tougher annual comparisons.

Reuters also report in the NYT that IBM retained the top spot in overall server revenue with a 28.3 percent market share, but saw No. 2 vendor Hewlett-Packard Co narrow the gap to a statistical tie with a 27.6 percent market share.

Dell posted the largest year-over-year revenue growth of 16.6 percent, creating a virtual tie for third place overall with a 10.8 percent market share while Sun Microsystems dropped slightly to a 9.9 percent share, IDC said.

The Reuters/NYT repoprt says that Fujitsu/Siemens rounds out the top five server makers with an 8.1 percent share of total server revenues.

The report says that sales of servers that use the freely available Linux operating system surged 35.2 percent to US$1.2 billion, amounting to its highest-ever share of overall quarterly server revenue at 10.3 percent. HP remained No. 1 in the Linux server market with a 27.7 percent market share, followed by IBM at 19.8 percent.

HP also remained at the top with server shipment share at 30.4 percent, followed by Dell at 24.5 percent market share.

Reuters also says that growth in the x86 server market, which use microprocessors made by either Intel or AMD, was 13.2 percent to nearly US$5.8 billion worldwide.