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Server Market Stabilized in Q1, Says Gartner Dataquest
by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Market research firm Gartner's Dataquest unit says the
server market finally may have stabilized, although Hewlett-Packard's
server sales stalled as customers and resellers contemplated the impact of HP's merger with
Compaq. HP's server sales in the first quarter of 2002
plummeted by 31.5 percent in the United States and fell by 13.3 percent worldwide, according to
preliminary estimates Gartner Dataquest released last week. Although worldwide server sales were flat,
with only 0.6 percent growth, shipments in the United States were up by 7.6 percent.
The good news this quarter came from the United States, where shipments were up among the top four
vendors--Dell, Compaq, IBM, and Sun
Microsystems--and also among all other vendors, except HP. Excluding HP, server shipments totaled
402,522 machines, up 10.3 percent compared with the first quarter of 2001, according to Gartner
Dataquest.
Dell shipped 109,091 servers in the United States in the first quarter, giving it a solid 26 percent market
share. Compaq, which lost its top position to Dell last year, shipped 89,994 servers for a 21.4 percent share.
IBM's share of U.S. server shipments in the quarter was 13.3 percent, with 55,651 units. Sun followed with
a 7.8 percent share, with 32,709 units. HP's shipments were a meager 17,100, down 31.5 percent from the
24,958 it shipped in the first quarter of 2001. HP may generate billions of dollars a year in the server
market, but, if it wants to keep pace with Dell, it needs Compaq in order to pump up the volumes. The
share of other vendors was essentially unchanged at 27.4 percent, with 115,187 units shipped.
On a worldwide basis, Compaq is still the market share leader. Compaq sold 248,201 servers in the first
quarter of 2002, up 1.6 percent from the 244,273 units it shipped in last year's first quarter. That gave
Compaq a 22.8 percent market share. Dell, which saw shipments rise by 14.2 percent, was able to pump out
193,407 servers and gain a 17.8 percent share of the worldwide market. IBM, the number-three vendor, got
155,107 servers out the door in the first quarter of 2002, a decline of 1.4 percent in unit shipments. That
gave IBM a 14.3 percent share of shipments. HP's market share slipped to 8.6 percent, with worldwide
server shipments down 13.3 percent to 93,641. Whatever problems HP has, they seem to be more acute in
the U.S. market. HP's server shipments declined by only 7.9 percent outside of the United States. It's
probably not a coincidence, then, that Dell made 56 percent of its sales in the U.S. market during the
quarter and HP made only 18 percent. (Maybe HP should have bought Dell?) For the worldwide statistics,
Sun shipped 68,655 units, down 1.2 percent from last year's first quarter. That gave Sun a 6.3 percent share
of the worldwide market. Other vendors accounted for slightly more than 30 percent of shipments, attesting
to the continuing viability of smaller vendors both in the United States and in the rest of the world.
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