IBM held on to its No. 1 spot in the worldwide server market with 31.1 percent market share in factory revenue, gaining 1.4 percent over the same quarter a year ago. Hewlett-Packard Co. was No. 2 with 27.7 percent, increasing 0.4 percent over a year ago.
For the sixth consecutive quarter, Dell Inc. recorded positive revenue growth, taking a 9.5 percent share and closing in on No. 3 Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun's revenue share declined 9.3 percent to 10.8 percent of the total market.
Revenue from servers based on microprocessors from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. increased 8.3 percent, with unit shipments jumping 21.4 percent. The server blade market, an important new element in this segment, continued to expand, with 50,000 units purchased in the third quarter, bringing the year-to-date total to 120,000.
"The x86 sever market continues to outpace our expectations with respect to unit shipment demand and customer spending," IDC analyst Mark Melenovsky said.
Revenues from servers based on the open-source Linux operating system grew by 49.8 percent to $743 million, while unit shipments increased 51.4 percent. The performance demonstrated Linux servers' "traction in the worldwide server marketplace as they take on more different types of workloads from other types of servers," IDC analyst Jean S. Bozman said.
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