Sun Microsystems Inc has been busy putting its own spin on the recently released International Data Crop figures for server sales during 1998. Sun says the figures show that it continues to hold the number one spot in worldwide Unix server shipments, and that it grew faster than its closest rivals in the total server market.
In 1998, Sun claimed a 24% market share of Unix server shipments, measured in worldwide factory revenue, and 26% of Unix shipments, compared with second place Hewlett-Packard Co’s 22% in factory revenues and 16% in shipments. The IDC figures for the total server market, including Unix, NT and other platforms, show Sun leading in the growth rate of factory revenues for the year, with 29% growth compared with HP’s 15%, IBM Corp’s 1% growth and a 1% decline at Compaq Computer Corp – whose figures include the DEC and Tandem businesses it acquired. But in overall factory revenues, Sun remains fourth in the market with a 10% share, compared with IBM (25%), Compaq (13%) and HP (13%).
Breaking the figures down into market sectors, Sun says it has a leading 42% share of shipments of high-end Unix systems costing more than $1m, where it more than doubled its factory revenues, compared with IBM’s 11% growth in the same sector. Sun claims its Enterprise 10000 servers sell into the space traditionally occupied by IBM mainframes. In total server sales above $1m, Sun showed a 7% gain in market share compared to IBM’s 3% growth.
For mid-range Unix system shipments, Sun won a 28% share, ahead of IBM and Compaq, but behind HP’s 32%. For Unix mid-range revenues, Sun has a 19% share, again ahead of IBM and Compaq but behind HP’s 31%. Sun claims the figures in this segment are distorted because all of HP’s V-class figures are included as mid-range. IDC admits that the V-class pricing is right on the cusp of mid-range and high-end categories, and that in future it will distribute V-class sales between the two categories. Re- categorization would, of course, reduce Sun’s lead in the high- end segment. For total mid-range unit shipments across all operating systems, Sun came third after HP and IBM, but saw 41% growth compared to HP’s 39% growth and IBM’s 12% decline.
For entry-level servers (priced under $100,000) where it is at its most vulnerable, Sun says it made headway by leading in worldwide Unix shipments both in unit shipments (25%) and factory revenues (27%). For total servers, including the fast-growing Intel-NT server market, Sun was behind Compaq, IBM and HP in both revenues and shipments. But it saw a 16% increase in factory revenues, compared with 5% declines at HP and 6% declines at Compaq, indicating that its profit margins for Unix servers are holding up favorably. Even so, Dell Computer Corp saw its factory revenues increase by 83%. Sun saw a 40% growth in unit shipments among entry-level servers. Last year, it lowered the entry-level cost for its servers to $3,296 with the launch of its Enterprise 5S system.
