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| Gartner Dataquest Says Worldwide Workstation Shipments Experienced 7 Percent Growth in Third Quarter of 2002 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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SAN JOSE, Calif., November 11, 2002 — For the second consecutive quarter, worldwide workstation shipments experienced an increase of shipments, according to preliminary third quarter results from Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT and ITB).
Worldwide workstation shipments totaled 367,710 units in the third quarter of 2002, a 6.5 percent increase from the same period last year and 1.8 percent from the second quarter of this year. The industry also experienced a growth increase in the second quarter of this year. Before then, the market suffered five quarters of year-over-year declines. "The third quarter shipments bring us nowhere near the record year 2000 shipments, but any sign of growth is a welcome change," said Pia Rieppo, principal analyst covering workstations for Gartner Dataquest's Computing Platform Worldwide group. "Given that this is only the second consecutive quarter of modest growth, we're hesitant to say the workstation market is completely out of the woods. The economy is still under performing, IT executives are reserved in their purchasing and there are still no new compelling technologies in the workstation market." Dell extended its lead as the No. 1 workstation vendor worldwide with its market share surpassing 40 percent (see Table 1). IBM moved past Sun Microsystems to take the No. 3 position. Table 1 Preliminary Worldwide Workstation Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q02 (Units)
Source: Gartner Dataquest (November 2002)
Gartner Dataquest analysts said Dell has succeeded while maintaining a simple three-model lineup. Others have been slowed down by a broad product range and muliplatform solutions. "Other vendors are able to help clients migrate from legacy platforms to commodity architecture or deal with compatibility within an heterogeneous environment, but they expand great effort and money in doing so. Dell's more simplistic price-focussed approach is proving successful in the current economic environment," Rieppo said. Gartner Dataquest analysts said other top-tier workstation vendors are making changes in an attempt to turn their fortunes around. "Many look for growth within the new mobile workstation platform while others face big strategy decisions," Rieppo said. "For example, Sun Microsystems, which for years was focused on Sparc-Solaris strategy, recently announced it would provide PCs for its customers. These moves may help preserve market share but, ultimately, the market lacks strong growth drivers, and the vendors will simply have to wait for replacement cycles to kick in." These results are preliminary. Final statistics will be available soon to clients of Gartner Dataquest's Workstations Quarterly Statistics Worldwide program. This program offers a comprehensive, global market information service that analyzes and documents the workstation industry. For more information on this program, please contact Becky Tonnesen at 408-468-8287, or by e-mail at becky.tennesen@gartner.com. Gartner Dataquest is the recognized leader in providing the high-technology and financial communities with market intelligence for the semiconductor, computer systems and peripherals, communications, document management, software and services sectors of the global information technology industry. About Gartner |
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Contact: Tom McCall Gartner +1 408 468 8312 tom.mccall@gartner.com |
