Hewlett-Packard Co. retained its spot as the top server vendor in the world in the second quarter, shipping 376,093 units to give it 29.5 percent of the market, according to numbers compiled by Gartner Dataquest Inc. and released on Monday.
Dell Inc. remained in second, shipping 261,575 units and capturing 20.5 percent of the market, followed by IBM, with 199,896 units shipped and garnering 15.7 percent of the market.
Rounding out the top five were Sun Microsystems Inc., with 5 percent, and Fujitsu Siemens, with 2 percent.
That lineup was consistent with market share numbers in the Intel-based server space, with the only change being Fujitsu Siemens moving up to fourth and NEC Corp. into fifth.
According to Gartner Dataquest, of San Jose, Calif., the overall server market grew 17.6 percent over the same period last year, with more than 1.2 million units shipped during the quarter. The analyst firm said customers have been taking advantage of the low prices resulting from a highly competitive environment, with sales of one- to four-way servers driving the upward trend.
The recent release of Microsoft Corp.s Windows Server 2003 operating system and new processors from Intel Corp. could help fuel a space where businesses are expected to begin replacing older systems, the report said.
The analysts who wrote the report were cautiously optimistic over whether the numbers represented the beginning of a growth trend, adding although the signs in the United States were encouraging, there will other areas of the world still struggling economically.