Mountain View, CA Ð NeXT moved up the charts and finished among the top five workstation suppliers worldwide in 1991, showing a more than 100-percent growth in shipments over the previous year, according to market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC).
With an estimated 25,600 workstations sold in 1991, NeXT more than doubled its worldwide shipments of 11,000 units in 1990, IDC said. NeXT's shipments represented the largest growth of the workstation suppliers.
Although it placed fifth with a market share of 5.4 percent, NeXT's shipments were still far below Sun Microsystems, which owns 39.6 percent of the market.
During a press conference in July, Steve Jobs said the numbers showed that NeXT had surpassed IBM in workstation shipments.
But in the overall ranking, which included both client and server uses of the machines, NeXT finished slightly behind IBM. IBM shipped 26,900 units in 1991, giving it a 5.6 percent share. NeXT did manage to place fourth, one spot ahead of IBM, in terms of the number of workstations being used as desktop machines rather than servers.
Company Workstations shipped
1991 1990
Sun Microsystems 189,200 146,050
Hewlett-Packard 80,125 75,550
Digital 65,900 64,000
IBM 26,900 16,405
NeXT 25,600 11,000
Source: International Data Corporation, 1992