"HP is still transitioning to Linux," said McLaughlin in explaining Hewlett-Packard's problems, "and Sun is still trying to find its direction."
In revenue rankings, IBM and HP came in first and second, posting estimated sales of $1.5 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively during the first quarter. Dell ranked third in the U.S. with $662 million in sales, and Sun took fourth with $520 million.
Overall, IBM owns 33.4 percent of the server market by revenue, an increase of nearly four percentage points over the first quarter in 2003. HP's share, however, dropped to 22.7 percent, a fall-off of 5.3 percent. Dell, meanwhile, boosted its share by just over two points, to 14.8 percent, and overtook Sun for third place. Sun's share now stands at 11.6 percent.
IBM's strong revenues were due in part because of major sales of its eServer zSeries, the top-of-the-line mainframe system the Armonk, N.Y.-based computer maker sells to major corporations. "IBM had a huge mainframe first quarter this year," said McLaughlin.
But the biggest growth wasn't on the high end. Sales of systems priced under $5,000, which account for 80 percent of all servers shipped and 25.7 percent of all revenues, grew by over 39 percent in systems sold and 40.4 percent in money made, the highest year-to-year increases of any price group.
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