Compaq extends workstation market lead - report

The company increased its share of workstations from 36.2 per cent in Q3 to 44.2 per cent in Q4, giving it a lead of 27 per cent over its nearest rival Hewlett-Packard (HP).

The report goes against the grain of an IDC survey which showed that HP was the market leader last year but Sue Forkin, Compaq's enterprise product marketing manager backed Compaq's position saying that Windows NT has enabled the company to beat-off the competition.

"Proprietary Unix/RISC vendors have never had it so tough," she said. "Whereas the total workstation market has seen massive growth over the past year, the Unix/RISC market has shown signs of decline. NT is now the premier workstation platform and Compaq now dominates the market, accounting for almost one in every two workstations shipped."