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Solid quarter for HP

HP's server shipments grew 8.7 percent over the second quarter of 2007, and revenue grew 2.9 percent. The market share gap between it and second-place Dell decreased 3.4 percentage points for the quarter, but no worries in Palo Alto. HP still owns 30.2 of the market, and it's still a huge success in blades, holding 45.2 percent of that market.

For RISC, which is primarily Intel's Itanium and Sun's UltraSPARC, the news is not so good. RISC-Itanium Unix servers fell 7.9 percent in shipments but grew 9.4 percent in revenue, which is great for more decked-out systems but reflects the dwindling interest in RISC processors.

"The RISC market is constrained," Hewitt said. For Sun it's worse because its x86 product isn't catching fire to offset RISC losses. Year over year, RISC sales declined from $1.6 billion in 2007 to $1.4 billion in 2008, while x86 Sun hardware rose from $203 million to $218 million.

"I am yet to be convinced they are luring new customers," Hewitt said. "I think Sun with its UltraSPARC and x86 has not been effectively selling outside their traditional customer base."

For the rest of 2008, Hewitt forecasts a repeat of this quarter, with single-digit revenue growth and single- to double-digit unit growth, with particular strength in the emerging markets.

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