IBM's blue bigness: A heftier systems bulge than you'd expect

. The spikes for Power Systems revenues keep getting shorter and shorter as the years go by and the Unix market contracts because of the recession and because of more intense competition from fat Windows and Linux boxes.

Mainframe revenues have been trending down because of the recession as well, but have been hampered by the impending announcement of System zEnterprise 196 machines this year. One interesting bit is that in the third quarter of 2009, System x iron almost matched Power Systems sales, matched it in the fourth quarter, and has beaten or matched the Power platform since then. The disparity was jarring in the third quarter of this year, when Power7 transitions really slammed the Power Systems line and Xeon chip transitions were well behind Big Blue and other players. System z sales have been on the rebound all year and will likely be even higher in the fourth quarter, but it seems exceedingly unlikely that they can come close to the peak hit four years ago. But, it is possible. It seems absolutely impossible that Power Systems hardware sales will get anywhere close to the peak set in the fourth quarter three years ago, but it could do as well as at the end of 2008. We'll know in about a month or so.

Next page: Playing to its strengths

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