Apple's server shipments up 350%


Quoting numbers attributed to Internet World, MacInTouch (Saturday, Jan 12) reports that Apple's share of the server market has more than trebled from 0.2 percent to 0.7 percent (Q3 '01 vs Q3 '02). An equally telling statistic is the fact that approximately 40 percent of growth had taken place by the end of Q2 '02 (ie before Apple's Xserve was released).

In terms of unit sales, Internet World quotes the following for Apple:
? Q3 '01 2,049
? Q2 '02 3,937
? Q3 '02 7,484

The average growth rate for the period was 1.8 percent in comparison to 3.1 percent for the Q3 '00 to Q3 '01 time frame.

The market leaders were HP, Fujitsu Siemens and Dell. Of the traditional top network iron makers, Sun was the only to report negative growth (-14.2 percent).

In late October of last year, IGM reported similarly encouraging numbers for the Q2 '01 to Q2 '02 period that indicated that Cupertino had risen to become the No. 5 vendor of back office iron.

Editor's note: The fact that Apple's server sales had begun to grow significantly before the arrival Xserve seems indicative that X' Unix underpinnings had begun to attract administrators. With Xserve in place and Jaguar released, as well as a growing range of X-compatible enterprise apps, the company's subsequent quarters should be as if not more impressive.