Dell and Compaq row over servers

Claims about Compaq's market share have provoked its rival's anger

Compaq's claim that it has almost 80 per cent of the Pentium Pro server market has met with scorn from arch-rival Dell.

Compaq said last week that, according to an IDC survey published on 13 August, nearly 80 per cent of Pentium Pro servers and super servers shipped in the second quarter of 1996 were Compaq Proliant 5000 models.

Pim Dale, director of server business Europe at Dell, was scathing about the claims. 'Eighty per cent of what?' he said. 'Compaq has messed up strategically by not releasing uni or dual-processor products until March next year, by which time we will have commoditised the market. All it has is the very high-end quad-processor Pentium Pro products, which make up under 10 per cent of the Intel-based server market.'

But Hugh Jenkins, systems group product manager at Compaq, said Compaq would ship uni and dual-processors before the end of the year.

'The Pentium Pro server market is not huge, at about 1,900 units a quarter, but it is growing fast and is strategically important,' he said. 'Dell is not going to have a quad processor until the new year.'

Dell released a single processor Pentium Pro server last week which it claims costs 10 per cent less than Compaq's Pentium-based Prosignia 300.

The direct vendor said it aims to become the second biggest player in the Intel-based server market within the next two years and has made no secret of the fact that it is ultimately gunning for Compaq.

According to Dataquest figures published in August, Compaq has 37.9 per cent of the Intel-based server market, ICL has 9.4 per cent and IBM and Dell each have 7.9 per cent.