IBM regains No. 1 spot in server market

According to Gartner Dataquest figures for the United States, IBM revenue increased 7.8 percent from $4.7 billion to $4.9 billion. Big Blue regained the No. 1 spot it lost to Sun Microsystems for 2000 sales, increasing market share from 21.5 percent in 2000 to 29.3 percent in 2001 while Sun waned from 22 percent to 21.4 percent.

Rivals Hewlett-Packard, Compaq Computer and Dell Computer also lost share and saw diminishing revenue.

Server companies had been accustomed to heavy demand and high profits from Internet and more mainstream companies, but the Internet implosion and economic turmoil led to lower shipments and intense pricing pressure.

The overall U.S. server market shrank 23 percent from $21.8 billion to $16.7 billion, Gartner said.

The Unix server market--the sweet spot with comparatively high price tags and high product shipment volumes--also shrank dramatically, dropping 25 percent from $10.3 billion to $7.7 billion.

Sun maintained a strong first place in Unix while losing some share to IBM. Sun's Unix server revenue dropped from $4.8 billion in 2000 to $3.6 billion in 2001, while its market share increased a mere smidgen from 46.3 percent to 46.4 percent.

IBM solidified its second-place rank with $1.3 billion in Unix server sales--an increase of 3.1 percent to 20.9 percent of the market. HP, in third place, dropped 0.5 percent to 16.6 percent.

The Intel server market dropped 27.6 percent from $9.3 billion to $6.7 billion, Gartner said.

Compaq and Dell were neck-in-neck, with 26.4 percent and 26.2 percent of the Intel server market, respectively. But Dell gained at Compaq's expense, growing 0.7 percent while Compaq dropped 2.16 percent.

Meanwhile, IBM posted the largest gain, 1.6 percent to a third-place 12.4 percent.