On Tue, 2010-02-16 at 18:11 +0100, Zoran Popović wrote: > http://www.idg.com/www/pr.nsf/0/C0DAA9494B23F50985257682005C593D > "EPIC servers experienced a resurgence quarter on quarter, up by a > strong 19.7% to $300 million, and nearly on a par with CISC revenue > now"
First, remember that report is for the EMEA only. Second, I think that has to be a typo. It probably should be "nearly on par with RISC revenue". They show x86 revenue as being "$1.7 billion" and EPIC as "$300 million" that's not really "on par". However, they list RISC revenue as "less than $400 million in sales" which certainly could be considered "nearly on par" with EPIC sales. Still, comparisons based solely on "revenue" does fairly represent market share from Redhat's perspective. Even if revenue was somehow equal, $300 million would be what, probably a few thousand EPIC servers, but that same amount would equate to 10's of thousands of x86 servers because they cost so much less per unit. Redhat has to make enough profit of the sheer number of machines, not how much money those machines costs. It's quite likely that Redhat would be willing to keep Itanium support around as long as customers were willing to pay 10x more than x86 customers for support, but my guess is they are not, so Redhat looks at it and says it's a market where they can't make money. Markets that don't make money are not good markets. You might wonder why they still support IBM Power and System/z which likely also have similar market share and that would be a valid question, but my guess would be that IBM provides some financial incentive to do so. Later, Tom _______________________________________________ rhelv5-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv5-list
