Global server market slips, Sun, IBM shares up

SAN FRANCISCO: According to the latest Gartner-Dataquest research, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM Inc) has widened its lead in a shrinking server computers market during the second quarter, raking nearly 30 percent of revenue worldwide.

However, rival Sun Microsystems Inc showed the fastest rise in market share and Hewlett-Packard kept the lead in unit volume, thanks to its acquisition of Compaq Computer in May. The report mentions that Dell Computer Corp also increased its share.

The global market for computers, which manage corporate networks and serve up data to other machines, shrank to $10.1 billion from $11.6 billion in the second quarter a year earlier and revenue from all top four vendors shrank, says a Gartner report.

IBM led the pack with 29.6 percent of the market revenue, up from 27.9 percent, followed by HP with 24.7 percent, down from 27.4, and Sun with 18.4 percent, up from 16.6 percent.

Dell increased its revenue share to 7.2 percent from 6.5 percent and was second by unit volume to HP. The two companies are leaders in the market for lower end servers.

(C) Reuters —