Workstations Thrive, Almost a Million Sell in Q4, 2010

While the IT market is getting back to its periodically-updated self, analysts are occupying themselves with studies on how various segments are behaving, and it seems that the workstation market has been flourishing.

Market analysts release new announcements and research results almost all the time, each one meant to shed some light on how a field is doing compared to others and itself (in the past).

This once, Jon Peddie Research stepped in and looked well into the happening on the workstation market during the fourth quarter of 2010.

Like so many other parts o the industry, the workstation market suffered during the recession, even more than many other fields.

Fortunately, with economy getting back together, and with 2010 seeing various new hardware products released (advanced DRAM and NAND, new CPUs, etc.), things began to look up.

The market analysis firm reached the conclusion that, overall, workstation sold 6.4% better sequentially, reaching the promising figure of 903.7 thousand shipments.

41.3% of them all came out of HP's labs, while Dell was close behind with 37.2 percent, essentially making this a duopoly of sorts.

"With professional graphics shipments most often a short-term prognosticator for the fortunes of workstations, the former's recent history raised concern we might see the latter experience its own double-dip,” said Alex Herrera, a senior analyst with Jon Peddie Research.

“But with numbers for Q3 and Q4 coming in more restrained, we're more optimistic that workstations will avoid a second sustained, non-cyclical drop in the near term."

Speaking of professional graphics adapters, a total of 1.1 million units were sold during the same October-December period.

In other words, shipments stayed flat, hinting at a sort of equilibrium which “should set the stage for a resumption of growth in the first quarter numbers for 2011.”