"The server market got a first opinion about its health from
Gartner earlier this week, and now, IDC dons the white coat and
snaps on the rubber gloves to give the third quarter server racket
a full checkup and a second opinion.
"By IDC's count, server peddlers moved $11.81bn in machinery in
the third quarter, a 13.2 per cent increase over the year-ago
period. IDC did not provide an overall shipment number for the
server space in Q3 (as it never does), but did say that shipments
rose by 13.1 per cent.
"Unlike Gartner, which looks at the overall market by vendor and
then breaks it down into x64 and RISC/Itanium categories in the
data it discloses to the public, IDC breaks server sales into
categories ranked by price band and primary operating system on the
box."