IBM Gets Top Server Spot Back

SAN FRANCISCO -- An analyst firm corrected its ranking of server vendors Thursday that had showed IBM(IBM Quote) losing its top place to Hewlett-Packard(HPQ Quote).

Gartner revised its first-quarter server revenue estimates, released in May, which had given the No.1 spot to H-P for the first time. The revision restores IBM as the leader, with 29.4%, or $3.91 billion in server sales, although statistics do show that Big Blue lost 0.1% of revenue share to other vendors, year over year.

H-P took in an estimated $3.77 billion, increasing its share by 0.3% to 28.3% of total server revenue. Dell(DELL Quote) moved up half a percent, to 12.3% of revenue share, with server sales totaling $1.64 billion.

H-P is the leader in unit shipments, with 30.1% of all servers shipped, vs. 22.7% for Dell and 13.3% for IBM. H-P's and Dell's shipments are primarily x86 servers, which typically cost well below $10,000. Gartner's server estimates include UNIX servers and mainframes, of which IBM is a leading supplier. Starting prices on mainframes range from $100,000 to $1 million, depending on model. ...