COMMERCIAL NEWS
San Jose, CA — The worldwide server and workstation industries posted double-digit growth rates in the second quarter of 2000, with increases of 11 percent and 14 percent, respectively, according to preliminary statistics by Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner Group, Inc. Worldwide server shipments reached 955,412 units in the second quarter, and workstation shipments totaled 440,463 units.
While the server market experienced double-digit growth, it is below the projected growth of 21 percent for 2000. The market did show a stronger increase than in the first quarter, and Dataquest analysts said this indicates some acceleration in the market because of the recovery from year 2000 issues. The market is also receiving a boost by strong sales in low-end servers (systems less than $25,000).
“The server industry’s growth in the second quarter was primarily fueled by e-business, which created a strong demand for front-end Web servers. These servers are on the lower end of the price scale,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, principal analyst for Dataquest’s Servers Worldwide program.
Sun Microsystems and Dell showed the best growth among the top-tier vendors in the second quarter. Both companies attribute their robust growth to their success in the low-end server market.
Driven by the sales of entry-level workstations, second quarter workstation shipments were ahead of the year-end growth projection of 8.5 percent. Dataquest analysts said the second quarter increase is the result of the “bleeding” in of sales to the PC market, and thus it represents a somewhat artificial workstation growth rate.
“Differentiation of high-end PCs and entry-level workstations is getting increasingly blurred,” said Pia Rieppo, principal analyst for Dataquest’s Workstations Worldwide program. “Many of the entry-level workstations being shipped in the second quarter this year are getting sold for PC uses as opposed for traditional workstation uses in design and analysis by technical and creative professionals.”
Strong sales in entry-level workstations helped Dell move past Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard to become the No. 1 vendor in terms of workstation units shipped, as it accounted for 23 percent of shipments in the second quarter of 2000.
These results are preliminary at this time. Final statistics will be available soon to clients of Dataquest’s Servers Quarterly Statistics program and Dataquest’s Workstations Quarterly Statistics Worldwide program. These programs offer a comprehensive, global market information service that analyzes and documents the server and workstation industries. More information about Dataquest’s programs, descriptions of recent research reports and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://www.dataquest.com .
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