The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's
server revenue rose 15.5 percent to $1.59 billion in the
quarter, according to statistics from research firm IDC. The
increase outpaced the overall growth of 0.6 percent to
$12.29 billion worldwide, with faster gains in x86 servers,
blade servers and lower-end models costing less than
$25,000.
Sun's three main rivals fared worse. In contrast, IBM's
revenue dropped 2.2 percent to $3.42 billion;
Hewlett-Packard's dropped 1.7 percent to $3.4 billion; and
Dell's dropped 1.3 percent to $1.27 billion.
Sun has been striving to turn around its core server
business for years after seeing its revenue and relevance
plunge during the dot-com crash earlier this decade. Among
its recent moves has been the introduction of its "Galaxy"
line of x86 servers using Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron
chips and its UltraSparc T1 "Niagara"-based servers that run
many threads of simultaneous instructions with low
electrical power consumption.
But a more important part of Sun's recovery was from high
demand for its mainstream servers using its UltraSparc IV+
chip, upgraded last week with 1.8GHz models. IBM is fighting
back with faster Power5+ processors across its entire Unix
server line, while HP will respond in coming weeks with
Intel's faster but delayed "Montecito" version of Itanium.
Servers using x86 chips such as AMD's Opteron and Intel's
Xeon were the "growth engine" of the overall market, with a
3.3 percent increase to $5.9 billion. But new technologies
have slowed buying behavior, IDC analyst Jed Scaramella said
in a statement.
"This growth has been tempered by the introduction of
technologies such as virtualization and dual-core into the
x86 server space," he said. "Enterprises are employing these
technologies to increase the efficiency of their installed
server systems, rather than deploying new systems."
In terms of unit shipments, the x86 server market grew 9.8
percent to 1.68 million systems, IDC said. Sun's shipments
increased 48 percent and HP's rose 3.6 percent, while Dell
and IBM x86 server shipments decreased.
Among other IDC findings:
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Blade server revenue grew 37.1 percent while
shipments increased 29.7 percent. IBM and HP are virtually
tied, IDC said; IBM had 39.5 percent of the market compared
with 38.9 percent for HP.
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Linux server revenue grew 6.1 percent to $1.5
billion, 12 percent of the overall market. That's the first
time in the last 15 quarters that growth was less than 10
percent.
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Unix server revenue shrank 1.6 percent to
$4.3 billion, while Windows server revenue grew 3.1 percent
to $4.2 billion.
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Itanium server revenue grew 36.4 percent to
$740 million.
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Servers with AMD's Opteron chip accounted for
20.2 percent of x86 server revenue.
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