Server market worth $49 billion

A REPORT FROMIDC showed that IBM continued to be number one in the worldwide server market with 38.2 per cent market share in the fourth quarter, an increase of 6.5 per cent on the same period the year before.

HP stayed the number one player with 25.9 per cent share, with most of its 5.9 per cent growth attributed to strong sales of Proliant machines. Sun and Dell tied for the third position - each hholding 9.4 per cent share.

Fujitsu Siemens Fujitsu saw its share drop by 6.8 per cent during the period, with a 4.7 per cent share in the fourth quarter of 2004.

But in the X86 market, HP held the number one spot with 32.6 per cent share, while IBM and Dell tied for second place with 21 per cent share each. Nevertheless, IBM has improved compared to the same period last year - it grew by 26.1 per cent.

While IDC did not break out the figures between the chip vendors, IDC said 25 per cent of all X86 servers now include 64 bit support in the shape of AMD64 and EM64T. We wish IDC would break out the figures...

Intel said recently it had shipped millions of Xeons including its EM64T technology.

The blade market also grew - according to IDC in 2004 it doubled in size and is worth over $1.1 billion worldwide.

Unix server revenues accounted for $5.2 billion in the quarter, a 2.7 per cent increase year on year. Linux server growth accounted for 60 per cent year on year, worth $1.3 billion in quarterly revenue. HP was first in this sector, followed by IBM and Dell (26%, 23.5% and 15.8% respectively). µ