TIBURON, Calif.—April 6, 2006—It might not be the soaring growth market it once was, but
the results are in and 2005 was an outstanding year for workstations and
professional graphics. Jon Peddie Research has completed its market tabulations
for Q4’05 and the full calendar year as part of the latest installment of its
Workstation Report series.
Workstation vendors shipped roughly 2.1 million units in
2005, up 22.6% from 2004. Revenue hit $5.3 billion for an 18.4% gain.
|
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
|
|
Units (K) |
1,575.7 |
1,697.3 |
2,080.9 |
|
% growth |
— |
7.7% |
22.6% |
|
Revenue ($M) |
$4,785.3 |
$4,501.2 |
$5,330.8 |
|
% growth |
— |
-5.9% |
18.4% |
Professional graphics.
Why the dramatic uptick in 2005? The market is benefiting
from looser IT budgets allowing system replacements to catch up with newer
technologies, such as dual-core, 64-bit and next-generation graphics. That
allowed ASPs for x86 based workstations to improve slightly while ASPs for
traditional (RISC/Unix) platforms fell at a much slower rate than previous
years. The market got an extra shot in the arm from the mobile workstation
segment, which remains red hot growing at a 72% clip.
HP closing the gap on Dell, AMD and Opteron making its
mark
Dell continues to dominate the workstation market with a
share of about 39% in Q4’05, down from 46% in Q1. HP follows with 27% and has
steadily closed the gap with Dell in recent quarters. Lenovo, IBM,
Fujitsu-Siemens, and Sun round out the top six.
At least in part, HP can credit its support of AMD’s
Opteron, which slowly but surely is stealing share from Intel’s Xeon as well as
legacy RISC/Unix platforms.With Opteron’s 2.6% market share (units), AMD is
still dwarfed by Intel, Dell’s only supplier, but the the trendlines are
clearly in AMD’s favor.
“If you extrapolate Opteron’s better near 350% growth rate, then
AMD is in the teens in a couple of years and putting a big dent in Intel’s
share,” said Alex Herrera, JPR senior analyst and Workstation Report author.
“But in 2006, with the new Woodcrest processor and Glidewell platform promising
dramatically improved system bandwidth, Intel should dramatically close the
performance gap with Opteron, especially in dual-socket applications.”
Professional graphics was a good place to be for Nvidia,
but not for 3DLabs
Nvidia continues to dominate the professional graphics
market, which in 2005 saw 2.8 million total units (including mobile) and $909
million in revenue (add-in card only), both up substantially from 2004. Nvidia
shipped 70% of units, but more significantly thanks to its attention to the
high-end segments, the company has grown its share of revenue to a commanding
79%.
|
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
|
|
Units (K) |
2,074.3 |
2,375.6 |
2,775.4 |
|
% growth |
— |
14.5% |
16.8% |
|
Revenue ($M) |
$928.0 |
$850.8 |
$908.6 |
|
% growth |
— |
-8.3% |
6.8% |
Professional graphics.
ATI has increased its unit share over the past two years,
now up to 23%, while Matrox and 3DLabs have seen their shares decline. 3DLabs
market share drop to just 2% overall was particularly painful, no doubt leading
to its departure from the market earlier this year.
About the JPR Workstation Report
Now in its third year, JPR’s Workstation Report—Professional
Computing Markets and Technologies has
established itself as the essential reference guide for hardware and software
vendors and suppliers serving the workstation and professional graphics
markets.
With in-depth attention to the vendors and technologies driving
the workstation platform, as well as a detailed quarterly sizing of the
marketplace for both workstations and professional graphics hardware, the JPR
Workstation Report provides the most
comprehensive assessment of professional client platforms.
Garnering special attention in the just-released April ’06
issue are the following topics:
• How
Intel plans to address the AMD threat, in 2006 and beyond• How
vendors are facing the challenge to raise performance while reining in
power consumption• The
hows and whys in the trend to multi-core architectures• The
role Traditional Proprietary Workstations (RISC/Unix) will continue to
play• The
impact of the mobile platform in the marketplace• Intel’s
new Core microarchitecture and its future impact in workstations• The
changing landscape in professional graphics, including the departure of
3Dlabs
Based in Tiburon, California, JPR provides consulting,
research, and other specialized services to technology companies, including
graphics development, multimedia for professional applications and consumer
electronics, high-end computing, and Internet-access product development