Sales in the United States of servers running Linux nearly doubled in last year's fourth quarter from a year earlier, according to new statistics from market researcher Gartner Dataquest. Total Linux server revenue was $384.6 million in the fourth quarter, up 90 percent from the $202.2 million in the first quarter a year ago. By contrast, overall U.S. server revenue climbed just 5 percent in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier.
IBM was the chief beneficiary of Linux server revenue, taking in some $159.9 million in sales, up from $75.6 million a year earlier. Hewlett-Packard saw sales rise to $80.2 million, up 81 percent from $44.3 million a year earlier. Dell Computer's Linux server revenue grew nearly 66 percent, but fell behind HP, with fourth-quarter sales of $77.1 million, compared with $46.4 million a year earlier. Sun Microsystems, which started selling Linux servers just last year, took in $1.3 million in the fourth quarter, up from $912,500 in the third quarter.
"Linux (sales) increased a lot because of IBM," said Shahin Naftchi, server analyst for Gartner. Naftchi said that IBM is now shipping blade servers, 75 percent of which run Linux. In the Unix market, U.S. server sales fell 3 percent from a year earlier to $1.69 billion, down from $1.74 billion. Sun remained the top seller of Unix servers, but saw sales drop more than 27 percent from a year earlier, to $675 million. HP solidified its No. 2 spot in the market, posting a 54 percent year-over-year increase, to $562.6 million. IBM posted a narrower 9.4 percent gain from a year earlier, with sales of $361.8 million. SGI was the fourth-largest seller, but saw sales dip 25 percent, to $39.1 million.
"HP's Unix is improving a lot," Naftchi said. "HP is gaining customer's trust, especially overseas."
News source: ZDNet
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