Could be worse
Graphics market analyst Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has announced that the workstation market shipped 9.9 percent fewer units in Q4 2008 than it did in the same period of 2007.
However, with JPR having reported a 28 percent year-on-year fall in the overall graphics market in January, and other researchers announcing similar figures for the total PCs this still represents a relatively good performance by the workstation market.
As with so many industries, even managing to ship as many units as it did came at the cost of margins, with average selling prices dropping by 13.4 percent. The combination of these two falls led to a 21.9 percent fall in revenue.
Among the system builders the workstation market is dominated by the big two: Dell and HP. According to JPR, Dell has historically been the clear leader but latterly HP is catching up.
Last year HP went from a 33.4 percent market share in Q1 to a 38 percent share in Q4. Dell still leads with a percentage share of around 40, but HP's revenue was actually greater than Dell's in that quarter.
|
Workstation market results |
Q3CY07 |
Q4CY07 |
Q1CY08 |
Q2CY08 |
Q3CY08 |
Q4CY08 |
|
Units (K) |
762.6 |
847.9 |
822.6 |
867.4 |
854.2 |
764.3 |
|
Total ($M) |
$1,781.9 |
$2,024.0 |
$1,891.0 |
$1,864.3 |
$1,831.7 |
$1,579.8 |
The professional graphics market had a much rougher time of it, with a year-on-year fall in shipments of 32.1 percent. NVIDIA continues to dominate with a market share of 86.3 percent, but this down from 90 percent the previous quarter while ATI's market share moved from 8.8 to 12.1 percent.
