System Sales Hit New Highs

White-box server figures reached the highest level ever recorded in the monthly poll, with 45 percent of respondents saying custom servers are their best-selling systems.

That's nearly 37 percent higher than the number reported in the March 2001 poll (33 percent) and nearly 10 percent higher than in February, when 41 percent of respondents cited white-box servers as their best-sellers.

But it's not just white-box desktops and servers that are gaining ground.

Custom-built notebooks also continued selling at a record clip, with 14 percent of survey respondents citing custom portables as their best-selling notebook PCs in March. That figure was the same in February and represents the highest number ever for white-box notebooks in the monthly CRN survey. In March 2001, only 6 percent of surveyed solution providers said white-box notebooks were their best-selling laptop PCs.

On the white-box desktop front, the number of respondents in March 2002 citing custom PCs as their best-sellers (49 percent) was lower than February's

(55 percent) but higher than in March 2001 (42 percent).

What's more, the percentage of solution providers surveyed that say they're building white-box systems is also on the rise.

According to the March CRN survey, 62 percent or respondents said they now build their own white-box servers, while 66 percent said they build their own white-box desktops.

While the desktop number jumped 8 percent from the year-ago figure of 61 percent, the percentage of solution providers building white-box servers surged about 21 percent from March 2001, when 51 percent said they assembled white-box servers.

In addition, the number for March 2002 was 17 percent higher than it was in February, when 53 percent of solution providers said they build their own white-box servers.