Additionally, while Sun enjoyed a three percent growth in shipments, the NT workstation market shrank by 10 percent, per IDC’s report(1). Sun’s growth extended its leadership of the UNIX workstation market, which it has led for 14 straight years. In Q1CY’01, Sun earned 40 percent of the UNIX market’s revenues and grew its shipments by three percent. With 63 percent of UNIX workstation shipments, Sun sold more workstations than all of its competitors combined.
Sun Microsystems has expanded its presence in traditional engineering markets and beyond with a full range of products, from the entry-level Sun Blade 100 workstation to the power-graphics Sun Blade 1000 system, said Kara Yokley, workstation research analyst, IDC. Sun’s UNIX market share will likely continue to grow because of its aggressive targeting of new markets and continued commitment to the UltraSPARC(TM) architecture and Solaris(TM) OS.
Even in this difficult economic climate, Sun continues to shine and forge ahead of the competition because we provide our customers with high performance workstations that feature our robust 64-bit Solaris Operating Environment, which can seamlessly scale from $1,000 workstations to multi-million dollar deployments, said Shahin Khan, vice president of Product Marketing in Sun’s Computer Systems Group. We have enhanced our workstation portfolio with the powerful UltraSPARC(TM) III microprocessor and the recent introduction of the UltraSPARC IIe-based Sun Blade(TM) 100 workstation, an affordable workstation that will help our customers continue to capitalize on the incredible opportunities of networked computing.
Sun introduced the Sun Blade 100 workstation in February 2001 as the first ever 64-bit workstation priced under $1,000. This new workstation, along with the recently unveiled Sun(TM) Expert3D-Lite graphics accelerator board, also priced under $1,000, brings full 3D functionality to a new price point for 64-bit workstations.
