Dale:
Those are imposing numbers. I can't really argue with the middle-range number (40% -> 70%). That's possible when and if Merced comes out, assuming it's competitive after its various slippages, which is by no means guaranteed. Note that this market will grow a lot during the next four years. What is IDC's projection?
As to the increase from 10% to 50% in the $50-$100,000 range, that is a joke. Intel's share will grow a little if Solaris is the operating system being used, which means more software, service and storage revenue for SUNW. If the IDC analyst based those numbers on the assumption that Windows 2000 will be up to the task of supporting high-end 64-bit machines at the same level as Solaris, then his projected number might as well have been drawn out of a fishbowl on a ping-pong ball. Intel's running around like the proverbial $2 hooker making "alliances" with Red Hat, SCO, and everybody else with an operating system (including Sun): Intel, at least, knows that baking assumptions about Windows 2000 into a five-year high-end server projection is a bad, bad thing to do. Whether IDC knows this or not is another question.
Also, how much does IDC project that these markets are growing during that time?
Regards, --QwikSand |