Uncertainty about Sun Microsystems Inc.’s future appears to have contributed to serious erosion in the company’s market share for computer servers in the latest quarter, according to new data being released Wednesday.
The latest numbers from market-research firm IDC show that Sun’s market share in servers stood at 10 percent in the second quarter, down more than a full percentage point from the same period last year.
Sun is the world’s No. 4 maker of computer servers, which power Web sites and corporate back offices. Rivals have siphoned off business by stoking fears about the future of Sun’s product lines under Oracle Corp., which has agreed to buy Sun for $7.4 billion but has been prevented from completing the deal because of antitrust scrutiny in Europe.
Rivals IBM Corp. and Dell Inc. gained market share in the latest quarter, to 34.5 percent and 12.4 percent, respectively. Hewlett-Packard Co.’s market share dipped slightly to 28.5 percent.
It was the toughest quarter for the server industry in 13 years, according to IDC. Many companies are still clamping down on spending on new servers and other computer hardware because of the recession.
But Sun faces an added challenge: Oracle’s planned acquisition could see further probing and more delays. The European Commission has until Thursday to approve the transaction or launch a more detailed investigation. The deal has already been approved in the U.S. by the Justice Department.
Any further antitrust review of the Oracle deal would likely include a closer look at Sun’s MySQL database, an open-source product that is popular among Web-based companies and competes against Oracle’s market-leading database software.
Sun and Oracle declined to comment.
Daniel Harrington, an IDC analyst, said Sun was hurt in part because demand for specialized servers that aren’t based on the widely used x86 microprocessors were hit badly in the latest quarter. Pressure from…