COMMERCIAL NEWS
Framingham, MASS. — In 2Q00, total branded workstation shipments (Unix plus Windows NT) were 409,123 units, down 4% from the previous quarter. The branded Windows NT workstation market fell 7%, while the Unix workstation market was up about 3%. Since most vendors shipping NT- based systems are entering the third quarter with substantial backlogs, barring huge memory shortages, IDC believes growth should be good during the second half of the year.
“The second quarter was difficult for most personal workstation vendors, who struggled with RDRAM shortages while trying to meet customer demand. Despite the supply constraints, the percentage of systems shipping with RDRAM increased from 38% in the first quarter to 75% in the second quarter,” said Kara Yokley, analyst in IDC’s Workstations research group.
For the first quarter in over a year, shipments in the personal workstation market declined. Many vendors faced memory supply constraints. With the memory market expected to have further shortages through the end of the year, workstation vendors could continue to be affected.
Dell, which was the sole vendor with an RDRAM-only strategy in Q200, was mostly unaffected by memory shortages. It captured the number-one position in shipments of branded Windows NT workstations with 93,000 units worldwide and 34% market share. Dell’s shipments of workstations grew 8% from the previous quarter. Dell also was number one in the United States with a 43% market share.
Compaq was number two in 2Q00 with 20% share in the branded personal workstation market. It remains the leader in economic and financial accounts where its midrange systems have had great success.
Hewlett-Packard had a difficult second quarter and slipped to third place.
Because of Intel’s recall of the 820/SDRAM chipset, HP’s Kayak line suffered considerable setbacks. Despite Kayak’s difficulties, HP’s NT Visualize workstations, which do not utilize the 820 chipset, had significant growth from first quarter. HP captured 17% of the worldwide personal workstation market in 2Q00.
IBM had 14% market share in the Windows NT workstation market and grew 29% from the previous quarter. IBM continues to be popular in CAD and EDA accounts.
“In recent quarters, many Unix vendors have adopted a maintain-the-base strategy, which includes price reductions and more attention to graphics and services. This is paying off with loyal customers, particularly those in CAE and other compute-intensive segments,” Yokley said.
Shipments of Unix workstations grew 3% from the first quarter. The combined shipments of the top three vendors accounted for over 88% of the Unix workstation market. Sun, which grew 7% from the first quarter and shipped over 84,000 systems, remained number one in the traditional workstation space. With sales of its popular Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 growing, Sun captured 60% of the Unix-based workstation market.
IBM and HP were in a virtual tie for second place in the Unix workstation market. Each captured approximately 14% of the market.
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