Sun Microsystems Inc left its fans rather worried with its year-end figures, for while profits were healthy enough, turnover grew by only 9%, and while a Unisys Corp or a Digital Equipment Corp would be over the moon to see 9% annual growth again, rather more is expected from a thrusting newcomer in a fast-growing market. With the first quarter figures (opposite), things look a lot healthier, with sales up 33% and orders up 35%. First quarter unit shipments soared nearly 50% over year-ago levels, to 74,000 computer systems – but with the steady price attrition, units have to grow quite substantially just to enable you to stand still. Our strategy is paying off, said Scott McNealy, chairman and chief executive: We are seeing benefits of our investments in technologies such as multiprocessing and networking. The company plans to continue targeting the corporate networking environment, said McNealy, but down the road, the home entertainment market for video-on-demand and other services will grow. But, meanwhile, a lot of money will be lost on the information highway over the next few years. We’d just rather not lose there. Sun does have its new Unix video server for companies that want to distribute training films or other data, and while early experiments have been delayed, sometime down the road it probably makes sense to get into the home arena, McNealy told Reuters in a telephone interview. The SunSoft Inc system software unit distributed 82,000 Solaris licences during the quarter. The Mountain View company concludes by warning that Orders and backlog are subject to customer cancellation with minimal notice and generally without penalty, and are not necessarily indicative of future revenues.
