Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/38279
JPR: Workstation Market Slows to a More Sustainable Pace Fortunately and as expected, the workstation market has slowed down. Completing analysis of the workstation and professional graphics market for the fi rst quarter, Jon Peddie Research (JPR) senior analyst Alex Herrera fi nds that after a robust rebound beginning in the second half of 2009 and continuing through 2010, the market has found a more modest and sustainable pace. While reduced growth might leave some disappointed, Herrera sees it as a healthy sign that the market is stabilizing and averting a second dip, one that the related market for professional graphics hardware couldn’t avoid. Q1 2011 is now in the books, with the quarter seeing 860,000 workstations shipped worldwide, representing a 4.8 percent sequential decline and an 18.6 percent year- over-year gain. Both those fi gures need to be weighed in context, however, to better understand the actual condition of the market. The year-over-year growth number has to be taken with a grain of salt, as a year ago the market had not yet fully recovered from the dramatic downturn of late 2008 and early 2009. As Herrera notes, “An exuberant year-over-year number for last quarter doesn’t translate into an exuberant outlook for the market. And the fi rst quarter in stable economic condi- tions typically sees a modest sequential falloff from Q4, on the order of what we saw.” So despite the fact that one number was substantially up and the other down, read in context, the fourth-quarter results would indicate a fl attening marketplace. Over the second half of the last decade, HP had made NEWS: WORKSTATIONS Luxology Unwraps Recoil Luxology has released Recoil, a new plug-in for Modo 501 (Mac and PC) that accurately simulates dynamic rigid-body interactions. Based on the popular open-source Bullet phys- ics engine, which is used extensively within the game and fi lm industries, Recoil realistically simulates dynamic forces and calculates accurate colli- 4 PRODUCT: PHYSICS June/July 2011 sions between objects, allowing users to quickly create complex animations or automatically stack vast numbers of objects. Utilizing Version 2.77 of the Bullet physics engine, Recoil simplifi es the setup and execution of complex physi- cal simulations by combining robust collision detection with a variety of constraints, forces, and controls. By tagging any mesh item to be dynam- ic, the object can respond to forces such as gravity or collisions from other objects in a Modo scene, thereby offer- ing new functionality for Modo 501 users. The recoil plug-in is available now and is priced at $199. steady gains in its chase of market-leader Dell. And in Q3 2010, HP pushed ahead to put an appreciable gap over Dell, one it extended even further in the fourth quarter. JPR was expecting a more dramatic separation of the two, an assumption that the results from the fi rst quarter of 2011 validate. At 42.9 percent of units, HP is now the undisputed king of the workstation market, clearly distancing itself from Dell at 34.8 percent. For the closely related market for professional graphics hardware, the fi rst quarter saw Nvidia (with its Quadro brand) and AMD (with its FirePro brand) combining to ship approxi- mately 1.19 million units, up 5.8 percent sequentially. The market bounced back strongly in the fi rst half of 2010 from the recession, mounting a pace JPR had thought was a little too hot in the context of the broader workstation and tech markets. As such, the fi rm saw the chance for a second dip in the market, one that eventually did manifest itself, occurring not only in Q3 2010, but extending into Q4 2010, as well. Herrera attributes the softer shipments in both quarters to an overly optimistic sell in the record-setting quarters prior, rather than due to any long-term malaise. “The fourth-quarter fl atness was more about continuing digestion at the OEM level, and we didn’t expect the dip to be severe nor protract- ed. Fortunately, Q1 2011 has delivered a solid sign that the preceding slide was nothing particularly consequential.” JPR’s “Workstation Report — Professional Computing Markets and Technologies” is an essential reference guide for those serving the workstation and professional graphics markets.