HOUSTON, April 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ) today
announced it has again captured the number one position in worldwide sales of
industry-standard servers in the first quarter of 2001, a market it pioneered
more than a decade ago. In Europe, Compaq gained 2.2 percent market share,
well ahead of Dell, which added only 1.3 points, and Hewlett-Packard and IBM,
who lost share in this region.
(Photo: newscom.com )
According to Q1 figures from industry research firm Dataquest, Compaq is
delivering more than a quarter of the world's requirement for
industry-standard servers, shipping 60,000 units more than second-place Dell,
and more than twice as many as IBM. The highlight of these figures is Western
Europe, where Compaq shipped close to 19,000 more servers than Dell and IBM
combined. Compaq now delivers greater than one-third of Western Europe's
total requirement for industry-standard servers.
In the United States, where economic conditions have impacted growth in
overall investments in IT infrastructure, Compaq has been taking aggressive
steps to improve business efficiency and drive increased growth and
profitability by focusing on permanently reducing channel inventories,
lowering structural costs, and streamlining supply chain operations. As part
of this process, Compaq has experienced a decline in reported U.S. market
share in industry-standard servers while overall inventories are being
depleted. This decline is primarily in entry-level one- and two-processor
tower models, popular with small and medium businesses, where pricing
competition is intense. Despite this, Compaq's internal estimates show that
actual overall industry-standard server shipments to end customers in North
America (known as sales-out figures) continued to exceed those of competitors.
"While we continue to lead in the industry-standard server market
worldwide, we are taking some necessary short-term pain for second-half gain
in the U.S.," said Mary McDowell, senior vice president and general manager,
Compaq Industry Standard Server Group. "The business model improvements we
expect to deliver over the near term, plus new aggressive moves in the areas
of pricing and delivery, will make us an even more formidable competitor in
the second half of the year and moving forward -- regardless of economic
conditions. We are now number one in customer satisfaction in this segment,
we're winning global end-to-end deals with major enterprise customers, and
we're receiving acclaim from industry analysts for our ability to deliver
innovative customer solutions globally."
In addition, Compaq announced that as of May 31 it will cease sales of the
ProLiant ML770 32-Way server, which is based on the Unisys CMP architecture.
Compaq will continue offering its popular ProLiant 8-Way servers for running
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 2000 Datacenter Server, which comprise 95 percent of
its Windows 2000 Datacenter Server sales to date. Compaq will continue
development of its own unique, feature differentiated 32-Way server
architecture to address the emerging need for large-scale enterprise
applications on Windows 2000.
Compaq is the acknowledged global leader in the 8-Way server space with
60 percent market share, and in the critical ultra-dense server segment,
including rack-mounted one- and two-processor servers, with 40 percent share.
And, in early April, the Company launched a new sub $1,000 server to address
the needs of small and medium businesses.
"Furthermore, we are now raising the bar for our competition by taking
ultra-dense server designs to hyper-dense server blades, with our forthcoming
QuickBlade server architecture. Sneak peeks at this unique new technology
have produced enthusiastic response from every customer and analyst who has
seen it," added McDowell.
Innovative products, global solutions, excellent execution drive customer
satisfaction
The latest customer satisfaction figures from independent research firm
TBR place the Compaq ProLiant at the top of customer satisfaction for servers
-- ahead of products from Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. Compaq was the only
vendor in the study that did not show a decline in customer satisfaction.
Most frequently referenced were Compaq's strengths in server scalability,
management, ease of installation, and remote diagnostics -- all indications
that customers appreciate the unique engineering, innovation and added value
that only Compaq offers. It was also noted that Compaq customers were the
most consistent in their satisfaction ratings due to dependable delivery of
products and services by the vendor.
Key ProLiant customer wins announced in the quarter include:
* A $150 million end-to-end global pact with one of the world's largest
petroleum companies, which included 1500 ProLiant servers;
* Yahoo!, who chose Compaq as its preferred Internet infrastructure
provider to power the most heavily visited sites on the Yahoo! network.
* Intuit, with whom Compaq announced a two-year agreement in which Compaq
was named the preferred provider of Intuit's IT needs.
* Activate, who launched a new 20,000 square-foot media streaming facility
housing 200 ProLiant DL380 servers.
With this momentum in increased customer satisfaction, business
improvements underway, and the introduction of innovative new products, Compaq
is extremely well positioned for continued success in providing global
end-to-end customer solutions in the second half of the year and moving
forward.
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