14 DAY TRIAL // Yet another report regarding the marketing performance of a certain product type has been published, in this case the workstation segment, which seems to have evolved well during the fourth quarter of 2010.
Like practically all other segments of the IT market, the workstation segment was hit hard by the recession during 2008 and 2009.
Analysts from Jon Peddie Research discovered that about 903.7 thousand workstations were shipped during the last three-month period of 2010.
This corresponds to an increase, sequentially, of 6.4%, which can be seen as moderate, though still quite encouraging.
HP and Dell have practically been wrestling over the top spot for several quarters, and it seems that the former managed to get a better lead than usual, although still of under 5%. To be more specific, HP got 41.3% share, while Dell was left with 37.2%.
JPR also looked into the situation on the professional graphics card market and discovered that Q4 was more or less flat, with 1.1 million NVIDIA and AMD units shipping in total.
"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 Jon Peddie Research senior analyst Alex Herrera.
"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."
That professional graphics cards stayed flat is something that Herrera sees as positive, since it implies a better equilibrium between sell-in and sell-out rates.
All in all, the market for workstations was able to take a step forward after the slowdown during the second half of 2010. What remains is to see if 2011 continues this upward trend and further boosts the number of sold system.