Motorola Inc is about to lose its long-standing number one place in the league table of processors running Unix, according to International Data Corp’s European Unix Expertise Centre. In 1991, Motorola won a 24% share of the market (in terms of system value) with the 68000 family, closely followed by Intel Corp’s iAPX-86 with 23%. Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sparc was third with 17%, MIPS Computer Systems Inc R-series fourth with 9% while IBM Corp’s Power and Hewlett-Packard Co’s Precision Architecture RISC tied with 7%. That left 13% of the market to others, mainly Motorola’s own RISC, the 88000, and the Intergraph Corp Clipper. Motorola’s share with the 68000 family plunged dramatically last year from a share of 33% in 1990, while RISC as a whole grew from 36% to 46%. By 1997, says IDC, RISCs will account for a 65% share of the marketplace. Intel is also expected to achieve strong growth, taking over pole position this year, growing slower than RISC, but still likely to win up to 29% of the market by 1997. Aside from the chips from Sun, IBM and Hewlett-Packard, IDC says that all other RISCs are facing serious challenges keeping their market shares in an environment with increasing development costs for new processor generations and shorter product cycles. That includes the beleaguered MIPS R-series family, which failed to improve on its 9% market share between 1990 and 1991.
