The latest IDC numbers show Hewlett-Packard Co shipped 330,559 Unix and NT workstations in 1997, up 43% on the previous year. 222,394 of those were personal or NT workstations compared with Compaq’s 199,700. Meantime, Sun shipped 285,815 Unix workstations in the period, down 3.3% on 292,000 in 1996 while HP’s unit Unix workstation sales plummeted 20% from 134,995 in 1996 to 108,865 in 1997. IDC reckons the combined Unix and NT workstation market is worth $15.8bn. The Unix market is expected to decline slowly or remain essentially flat through 1998 with NT workstation sales rising 50%. HP saw its NT workstation sales go from 96,000 in 1996 to 222,394, while Compaq’s sales went from 92,000 to 199,700. The comparison with Unix is vague at best: HP counts anything with a fairly new Intel CPU, advanced graphics, 32Mb RAM and 4Gb disk as a workstation.
