News release

HP Leads in Server Shipments Worldwide for Tenth Consecutive Quarter

Company secures No. 1 ranking for total UNIX revenue; maintains No. 1 position in Linux and Windows

HP continued its No. 1 position in worldwide server shipments for the tenth consecutive quarter, according to third quarter 2004 figures released today by IDC.⁽¹⁾

Building on the strong momentum of its HP-UX operating system, HP secured the top spot for factory revenue of UNIX®-based servers. Today's IDC results show that HP is again the revenue leader in all three major operating systems – UNIX, Linux and Windows®.

Other highlights of the quarter included:

• HP grew its x86-blade server units 92.6 percent year-over-year, twice the worldwide market growth rate, and increased its unit market share almost nine percentage points. This strong growth in the HP BladeSystem business enabled HP to move into the No. 1 unit share position for the large U.S. market.
• HP secured the No. 1 UNIX server revenue market share position, growing two market share points sequentially. Based on IDC's numbers, HP continued its leadership in total UNIX revenues on high-end⁽²⁾ and midrange⁽³⁾ servers.
• HP continues to lead the fast-growing worldwide Linux server market in factory revenue and units, with 27.4 percent growth in units year-over-year and 35.7 percent growth in revenue.
• HP continues its leadership in Windows server shipments with 19 percent unit growth year-over-year.
• HP's leading revenue in each of the three major operating environments – UNIX, Windows and Linux – demonstrates the sustained strength of HP's multi-OS strategy.
• In the high-growth industry-standard x86-64 (Intel® Xeon™ EM64T, AMD Opteron) server market, HP was No. 1 in revenue and units, with significant growth leading to 34.3 percent unit share. In fact, HP shipped nearly as many units as the next three vendors combined. HP is the leading vendor to offer x86-64 servers based on both architectures for customer choice.
• HP leads the worldwide Intel Itanium® 2-based server segment in revenues and units. HP Integrity servers grew 65.9 percent in units year-over-year and 299.4 percent in factory revenue.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended Oct. 31, 2004, HP revenue totaled $79.9 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.

⁽¹⁾ Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, November 2004.

⁽²⁾ The UNIX high-end enterprise server market consists of all UNIX systems with an average sales value of $500,000 and higher.

⁽³⁾ The UNIX midrange enterprise server market consists of all UNIX systems with an average sales value of $25,000 to $500,000.