Unix server sales continue downward spiral, Gartner says

IBM was the top server vendor during the fourth quarter, with sales of $4.1 billion, a drop of 5.9 percent year over year and a 32.7 percent market share. In a close second was Hewlett-Packard, with server sales of $3.95 billion, recording a small growth of 0.4 percent and 31.3 percent market share. Dell's server revenue increased by 8.3 percent to $1.5 billion, putting it in third place. Sun Microsystems, which has since been acquired by Oracle, saw a massive 23.5 percent drop in server sales.

IBM was also first in Unix servers with a 40.5 percent market share during the fourth quarter of 2009. The company registered sales of $1.2 billion, a year-over-year drop of 11.1 percent. Hewlett-Packard was second, with sales of $876 million, a year-over-year drop of 19.9 percent. Sun shipped the largest number of Unix servers during the fourth quarter, but was third in revenue with sales of $753.8 million, a year-over-year drop of 29.1 percent. Fujitsu was fourth, recording the largest drop of 55.4 percent.

Hewlett-Packard topped the x86 server market with sales of $2.8 billion, a year-over-year growth rate of 15.7 percent, and a market share of 38 percent. In a distant second was Dell, recording an 8.3 percent year-over-year sales growth to reach $1.5 billion, for 20 percent market share. IBM was in third place, with its server sales growing 37 percent to reach $1.4 billion. Sun and Fujitsu were in fourth and fifth places, respectively.