Analysts say IBM executives have reason to snap their suspenders when it comes to the company's chip advances.
"If you look at IBM, they weren't selling chips to the outside world just five years ago," said Richard Doherty, market analyst with Envisioneering Group Inc. in Seaford, N.Y. "And they've already shipped 25 million of the copper ones. It's a milestone. It took Intel more than a decade to ship that many chips of any kind."
It's rare that any chipmaker can sustain a chip technology lead over competitors for long, says Fred Zieber, market analyst with Pathfinder Research in San Jose, Calif. But IBM has stayed about two years ahead of the industry, he says.
"You have some copper chips being made by Motorola and Advanced Micro Devices, but for the rest of the industry, production is still fairly limited," Zieber said.
Doherty credits copper technology with helping to fuel growth in the company's server and outsourcing businesses.
Although IBM's total hardware sales decreased in the second quarter, the company's server market share rose 13.9 percent according to Gartner Dataquest. It was only company to show a market share increase, other than Dell Computer (DELL: news, chart, profile). IBM had the most total server revenue of any company.
In IBM's second quarter, the company increased its external technology sales 5 percent to $2.1 billion.
IBM (IBM: news, chart, profile) shares rose 36 cents Thursday to close at $97.31.
Mike Tarsala is a San Francisco-based reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com. |
