Server Market Slow Overall; Dell, IBM on Top
Citing a lax market for higher-end midrange systems in the United States and Western Europe, a new report by Gartner Dataquest shows marginal growth for worldwide server shipments in the second quarter of 2001.
Preliminary statistics by Dataquest show the server market grew by .7 percent to reach 973,784 units in second quarter, up from the year-prior mark of 966,779 units. Compaq remains the most demanded server brand with 26.7 percent of the worldwide market, followed by Dell and IBM, which garnered 18 percent and 16.7 percent of the market, respectively.
Dataquest metrics show, while the market share positions of the top five worldwide vendors haven’t changed, only Dell and IBM had positive year-over-year growth, 28 percent and 10 percent respectively. Overall, the U.S. server market showed negative 11 percent growth with shipments of 347,045 units in the second quarter, down from the year-prior mark of 390,951 units.
Dell and Compaq share the lead in the U.S. market with 28.5 percent of the market, followed by IBM, Sun and Hewlett-Packard with market share of 17.1 percent, 7.9 percent and 7.7 percent, respectively. IBM and Dell were the only vendors in the top five to experience growth in both the U.S. and worldwide markets.
"IBM's recent aggressive attacks on HP and Sun customers began to bear fruit for the company, while HP's continuing channel conflicts may have helped IBM's attacks become more successful," said Jeffrey Hewitt, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest's Servers Worldwide program in a statement. "Sun's UltraSPARC III issues and current poor reputation for service and support hastened its decline and this shows that its incredible momentum from 2000 has dissolved for now."
Final statistics for this report will be available soon to clients of Gartner Dataquest’s Servers Quarterly Statistics program.