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Workstation shipments drop due to memory shortages, says IDC
By J. Robert Lineback
Semiconductor Business News
(08/18/00, 09:05:47 AM EDT)
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Shortages of memory chips--in particular Rambus DRAMs -- caused workstation shipments to decline by 4% to 409,123 units in the second quarter from 424,874 in the first quarter of 2000, said a new report from International Data Corp. here.
The market research firm predicted a return to "good" unit growth in the second half of 2000, barring severe memory shortages. IDC said vendors currently have substantial backlogs of orders for workstations based on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT operating system. Unit shipments of NT-based systems dropped 7% in the second quarter, while Unix-based workstations were up 3%, according to IDC.
"The second quarter was difficult for most personal workstation vendors, who struggled with RDRAM shortages while trying to meet customer demand," said analyst Kara Yorkley in IDC's workstation research group. "Despite the supply constraints, the percentage of systems shipping with RDRAM increased from 38% in the first quarter to 75% in the second quarter."
DRAM manufacturers have struggled to gauge the market demand for Rambus DRAM chip and modules, which require additional investments in high-speed test equipment and more expensive packaging compared to standard synchronous DRAMs. Several setbacks and glitches in chip-set support from RDRAM booster Intel Corp. also derailed Rambus momentum in the past 12 months. Rambus Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., has also begun a patent-enforcement campaign aimed at collecting extra royalties on non-RDRAM memories in an effort to draw revenues from double data rate (DDR) DRAMs and SDRAMs.
But Samsung, Toshiba, NEC, and other memory suppliers are ramping volumes of RDRAM chips, according to Rambus. For example, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in South Korea has predicted that Rambus memories will account for more than 20% of its DRAM output by December and more than 40% of its DRAM production by the end of 2001 (see June 22 story).
Despite these efforts, momentum behind Rambus DRAMs continued to waffle this summer. Last month, Intel conceded that it was backing away from its RDRAM-only stance for the upcoming Pentium 4 microprocessor (see July 28 story).
IDC analysts worry about the impact of memory shortages on workstation shipments in the months ahead. With many memory manufacturers holding back investments in new wafer fab capacity during the past year, production lines are now stretched, according to industry experts and managers.
Additional capital equipment is needed not only to increase unit volumes but also to shrink device feature sizes below 0.18-micron for higher density memories, said David N.K. Wang, senior vice president at Applied Materials Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif., during a teleconference with financial analysts last week. Applied Materials expects to see DRAM shortages in the fourth quarter this year before new capacity is added (see Aug. 11 story).
Dell Computer Corp., which was the sole vendor with an RDRAM-only strategy in the second quarter, was mostly unaffected by memory shortages, according to IDC. The research firm said Dell captured the No.1 position in shipments of Windows NT workstations with 93,000 units worldwide and34% market share. Dell's workstation shipments grew 8% from unit volumes in the first quarter, estimated IDC.
Compaq Computer Corp. was No.2 in the second quarter with 20% share in the personal workstation market, IDC said. Hewlett-Packard Co. slipped to third place partly because of Intel's recall of the 820/SDRAM chip set, said IDC. HP had a 17% market share in personal workstations, according to IDC's second-quarter |
