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I wasn't surprised to hear that HP's server sales beat the competition in the 3rd quarter.  Most of my x86 server experience has been with their ProLiant/Prosignia line of hardware and I'm fairly partial to them because of their reliability.  So, the press release reporting that their x86 line of servers were selling well didn't really open my eyes:

"HP increased its worldwide server unit shipments by 10 times the total of all other vendors combined in the third calendar quarter of 2007, according to figures released today by industry analyst firm IDC.

During the period, HP captured 32.4 percent total unit shipment share ­– more than Dell, IBM and Sun – and grew server factory revenue faster than the market.  Highlighting its performance, HP experienced significant growth across its ProLiant, Integrity and BladeSystem families of servers and server blades."

This trend wasn't only isolated to Windows platforms, but Linux was well-represented too:

"HP grew Linux server unit shipments and factory revenue significantly faster than the market, gaining 4.7 percentage points of factory revenue share in the third quarter of 2007.  HP grew Linux server factory revenue by 26.6 percent and unit shipments by 31.1 percent year over year.  As a result, HP remains the No. 1 Linux server vendor worldwide."

It did surprise me that the same press release reported much of their success had been not with their x86 and Blade products, but with their high-end Itanium 2 families of servers:

"HP increased its total high-end UNIX server share by growing factory revenue 9.8 percent year over year and increasing unit shipment market share by 28.5 percent year over year, while the total high-end server market overall declined.  As more companies look to drive growth by modernizing business-critical applications on highly reliable and efficient systems, HP experienced increased demand for HP Integrity servers in the third quarter of 2007."

Apparently there is still need for "Big Iron" out there and the Itanium 2-based Integrity servers/blades, as well as their Integrity NonStop siblings are very much in demand.  I'll have to learn a bit more about the Integrity line to keep abreast of developments since the introduction of their dual-core Itanium 2 (Montecito) processor last year and a quad-core, 65nm version (Tukwila) is on the horizon.