HP Outpaces Market in Blade, x86 and UNIX Server Market Share Growth

Business Wire, Nov 29, 2007

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP (NYSE:HPQ) increased its worldwide server unit shipments by 10 times the total of all other vendors combined in the third calendar quarter of 2007, according to figures released today by industry analyst firm IDC.(1)

During the period, HP captured 32.4 percent total unit shipment share - more than Dell, IBM and Sun - and grew server factory revenue faster than the market. Highlighting its performance, HP experienced significant growth across its ProLiant (http://www.hp.com/go/proliant), Integrity (http://www.hp.com/go/integrity) and BladeSystem (http://www.hp.com/go/bladesystem) families of servers and server blades.

"This quarter's stellar results exemplify HP's ability to deliver server offerings that address the needs of IT leaders worldwide," said Scott Stallard, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP.

After adding products designed specifically for the midmarket, HP saw increased demand for its HP BladeSystem c-Class architecture and ProLiant family of servers as more customers looked to refresh their IT infrastructures with lower cost, higher performing server systems.

HP extended its lead as the No. 1 blade server vendor in total blade server units shipped and factory revenue, growing revenue by 79.6 percent year over year and gaining 9 points of market share year over year at the expense of IBM and Dell.

HP also maintained its commanding lead as the No. 1 x86 server vendor, with 33.2 percent unit market share and 33.3 percent total factory revenue share, growing nearly three times the year-over-year unit growth rate of the overall x86 market.

HP increased its total high-end UNIX(2) server share by growing factory revenue 9.8 percent year over year and increasing unit shipment market share by 28.5 percent year over year, while the total high-end server market overall declined. As more companies look to drive growth by modernizing business-critical applications on highly reliable and efficient systems, HP experienced increased demand for HP Integrity servers in the third quarter of 2007.

"HP is innovating across its overall server and BladeSystem portfolios and executing effectively on its channel strategies for value-added resellers and integrators," said Stallard. "These market share results illustrate that we are making the right investments, in the right technologies, at the right time."

Additional details and highlights from IDC's report include:

* In the worldwide blade server market, which exceeded $1 billion in the third quarter of 2007, HP extended its No. 1 position, growing its total blade factory revenue by 79.6 percent and units shipped by 89.3 percent year over year during the period. Fueled by increased customer demand for the HP BladeSystem c-Class architecture, HP now holds 44.1 percent unit shipment share and 42.1 percent factory revenue share, gaining 14.2 percentage points of unit shipment share and 9.0 percentage points in revenue year over year.

* Growing significantly faster than the x86 server market overall, HP saw increased success with its ProLiant family of servers, growing x86 factory revenue 10.7 percent year over year. With the availability of new ProLiant servers tailored for small and medium-size businesses and a broad range of refreshed server systems based on the latest quad-core processor technology, HP led the x86 server market for the 45th consecutive quarter with 33.3 percent factory revenue share and 33.2 percent shipment share.(3)

* Continuing to deliver market leadership across the high-performance computing market, HP led the market with 34.3 percent market share and outpaced the market in revenue growth. Additionally, HP continued to hold the No. 1 position in the high-performance computing cluster market in the third quarter of 2007 with 34.4 percent revenue share, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of leadership.(4)

* As more businesses look to move from proprietary server architectures to lower cost, standards-based systems, HP maintained its No. 1 position in combined Windows[R], Linux and UNIX server unit shipments and factory revenue, with 32.4 percent and 32.0 percent share, respectively. These three operating systems account for 98 percent of all servers shipped worldwide.

* HP grew Linux server (http://www.hp.com/go/linux) unit shipments and factory revenue significantly faster than the market, gaining 4.7 percentage points of factory revenue share in the third quarter of 2007. HP grew Linux server factory revenue by 26.6 percent and unit shipments by 31.1 percent year over year. As a result, HP remains the No. 1 Linux server vendor worldwide.

* Fueled by increased demand for HP Integrity and HP Integrity NonStop (http://www.hp.com/go/nonstop) servers in the third quarter, HP grew Intel[R] Itanium[R] processor-based server revenue by 57.2 percent.

* HP maintained its No. 1 position in both revenue and factory units shipped in the highly competitive x86-64 processor-based server market segment. HP shipped more than 2.3 times and 26.3 times as many servers as IBM and Sun, respectively, leading the competition in both Intel and AMD x86-64-based servers.