IBM Retakes Server Crown

The endless story of "Who's the top dog in server-ville?" entered a new chapter this week as new stats from IDC place IBM at the head of the pack. The company is enjoying a 30.4 percent share of the $10.6 billion worldwide server market.

The report issued Friday as part of the Framingham, Mass.-based analyst group's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker focused on Q2 of 2003. The findings? The Armonk, N.Y.-based company supplanted last quarter's leader -- Hewlett-Packard -- gaining just over 10 percent in server sales in the last three months to $32 billion.

HP fell to second place with server sales growing 0.4 percent to $2.9 billion. Dell filled in the number 4 spot with an 10 percent increase in sales to $980 million.

Only third-place Sun Microsystems lost revenue in the second quarter by 18.7 percent to $1.4 billion. The sting is especially hard for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based network computer maker as IDC noted IBM grew 20.4 percent year-to-year in the Unix Server market taking 5.2 points away from Sun. One bright spot according to the stats is that Sun still remains the top Unix-based vendor with 33 percent market share in a $4.33 billion market.

The data also points out IBM's Intel revenue gained 23.3 percent year-to-year with a 1.8 points share gain, while HP and Dell lost share year to year in the Intel breakdown. IBM also said its Linux revenues rose from 51.8 percent for a 1.6 market share gain while Dell and HP both lost customers.

The changing of the guard could not come at a worse time for HP, which posted what is being characterized as "disappointing numbers" for its third quarter 2003 earnings. HP said its Enterprise Systems Group had a rough quarter with $3.71 billion in revenues.

IBM has been capitalizing on HP's Unix installations including its outsourcing business and corporate customers like LEGO.

This article was originally published on internetnews.com.