TIBURON, Calif—December 5, 2008 The markets for workstations and professional graphics hardware performed admirably in the third quarter, but both show the expected signs of a cooling global economy. Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has complete its analysis of the third quarter and reports the two tightly-coupled industries saw unit growth, but at a much reduced rate from quarters’ past.
According to JPR, a total of 854.2 thousand workstations shipped in Q3’08, accounting for about $1.8 billion in revenue. And while those numbers translate to moderately bullish year-over-year gains of 12.0% and 2.8%, respectively, they pale in comparison to the 15 to 25% gains (unit growth) the industry had been enjoying over a long string of robust quarters going back to 2005. The professional graphics hardware market experienced similar cooling, posting a unit gain of 8%, in contrast to rates it had seen recently up in the 20’s and 30’s.
| Workstation market results |
Q2CY07 |
Q3CY07 |
Q4CY07 |
Q1CY08 |
Q2CY08 |
Q3CY08 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Units (K) |
719.9 |
762.6 |
847.9 |
822.6 |
867.4 |
854.2 |
|
Total ($M) |
$1,714.8 |
$1,781.9 |
$2,024.0 |
$1,891.0 |
$1,864.3 |
$1831.7 |
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)
Changing fortunes among industry players … again.
As the end of ’08 approaches, the industry is seeing shifting fortunes among workstation suppliers and vendors once again. With the last two suppliers of traditional proprietary workstations — Sun and IBM — dropping their long-time UltraSPARC and POWER platforms (respectively), the transition to the PC-derived workstation is now complete. IBM is now out of the market completely, while Sun (at least for now) will hang onto one Intel-based model. In today’s market, Dell and HP enjoy a near duopoly, with Lenovo and Fujitsu-Siemens remaining strong in specific pockets of the market.
On the platform side, AMD saw its workstation share decline once again. With HP’s shipments of Opteron workstations taking a dip, and with Sun, the number two provider of Opteron workstations, dropping the platform, AMD’s share took a substantial hit in the third quarter. AMD was responsible for approximately 2.1% of the processors shipped in workstations in the quarter, down from 2.9% in Q2’08. Within the confines of the workstation market, the company remains a distant speck in the rear-view mirror of Intel, which now commands 97% of shipments.
Nvidia meanwhile continues to dominate for professional graphics hardware, shipping 90% of overall units in the third quarter, the highest share in JPR’s records. That number may end up marking Nvidia’s peak, however, as competitor AMD is ramping a new set of more competitive products that should pull back some share in coming quarters.