Mumbai, Feb 27 (UNI) Hewlett Packard has earned the distinction of of being the world leader in the blade server market for the calender year 2006, beating its closest rival IBM by over ten times, according to a study conducted by industry analyst firm IDC.

The findings of the study, which were released here today, revealed that HP overtook IT behemoth IBM to lead the blade server market in the fourth quarter with 41.9 per cent factory revenue share and 40.0 per cent total factory units share and showed more than ten times the growth of IBM in units and revenue year-over-year.

For the 19th consecutive quarter, HP led the worldwide server market in total units shipped, with 31.6 percent share in the fourth quarter. HP also outpaced industry unit growth at 4.6 percent year-over-year in that quarter, taking share from the two nearest competitors, the study observed.

In the high-performance computing market, HP was leading in revenue too, with 33 per cent market share, and surpassed even the industry revenue growth by nearly two times with 16.7 per cent year-over-year growth, the study said.

Besides, HP also held a commanding lead with 31.3 per cent market share in combined Windows, Linux and UNIX server revenue for 2006, with the three operating systems accounting for more than 97 per cent of all servers shipped worldwide and more than 80 per cent of all server revenue, the study added.

UNI