IDC: Server Revenue Off 26 Percent In 4Q, Shipments Down 7 Percent

Worldwide server factory revenue for the quarter was $12.6 billion, a drop of about 26 percent from the $16.9 billion server revenue for the same period the year before, according to research firm IDC, which on Friday released the results of its latest study of the market.

A total of 1.14 million servers were shipped in the quarter, down about 7 percent from the year before.

In terms of revenue, IBM was the top server vendor for the quarter with a 32 percent market share. Compaq Computer was second with 17 percent of the market, followed by Hewlett-Packard at 14 percent, Sun Microsystems at 12 percent, and Dell Computer at 7 percent.

In the Unix server market, IBM squeaked by Sun for the first time in three years with 26.9 percent of the revenue compared with Sun's 26.8 percent. HP followed with 25 percent of the Unix market.

For the entire year, worldwide server revenue was $49.8 billion, a drop of 19 percent from the revenue recorded in 2000, according to IDC. Shipments dropped 2 percent from 2000. IBM had a 28 percent share of the 2001 server revenue, followed by Compaq at 16 percent, HP at 14.4 percent, Sun at 13.8 percent and Dell at 7 percent.

In a related development, IDC said Linux surpassed NetWare in terms of operating systems for new Intel-based servers.

IDC also estimated that 34 percent of all servers sold in 2001 were rack-optimized models.