Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

IBM, Dell Do Best In Q1 U.S. Server Sales

The server market grew by seven percent in the first quarter of 2004, a research firm said Tuesday, largely fueled by sales of low-cost systems under the $5,000 price point.

But not every server seller found the quarter sweet, said Mike McLaughlin, principal analyst with Gartner.

"IBM was up, HP was down, and Dell passed Sun for third place," said McLaughlin.

IBM and Dell both saw their server sales increase by more than 20 percent over the same quarter last year, according to Gartner's numbers. IBM posted a revenue gain of 21.8 percent and increased the number of servers it sold by 30.7 percent, said McLaughlin, while Dell boosted its revenues by 24.2 percent and its server volume by a whopping 42.5 percent.

But where there are winners, there are also losers. Hewlett-Packard and Sun got the short end of the stick in the first quarter, said McLaughlin. HP's server revenues fell by 13.2 percent even as the total number of servers it sold rose by 16.4 percent. Sun, meanwhile, dropped 16.7 percent in revenues as it too sold more systems -- 26.3 percent -- than a year ago.

  • 1