Overall, the European market for Unix systems rose by 11% in value last year, down from the 15% of 1991, says International Data Corp, which reckons that it is now worth some some $7,600m. Slow rise in demand for workstations and severe pressure on prices were the key to the slowdown, the market researcher believes, pointing out that the actual number of machines shipped in the mid-range and workstation sectors rose by 24% and 19% respectively. One third of all growth in market value was split between Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp. IDC ranks Hewlett-Packard as the number one Unix vendor in Europe, and says the company increased its lead over second placed Sun Microsystems Inc during 1992. Meanwhile, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG’s third place spot is under attack from IBM.
