Sales of computer servers grew about 8 percent to $12.5 billion in the third quarter, with Hewlet... Sun loses market share in

Sales of computer servers grew about 8 percent to $12.5 billion in the third quarter, with Hewlett-Packard and Dell gaining market share, two market research firms said Wednesday.

Sun Microsystems of Santa Clara lost some market share as customers waited for new products, some of which were introduced in September at the end of the quarter.

According to IDC, a market research firm in Framingham, Mass., Sun slipped from third place in the year-ago third quarter to fourth place this year as its worldwide server revenue fell 7.6 percent. In the third quarter, IDC said Sun had total server sales of $1.08 billion, down from $1.17 billion a year ago. Its market share slipped to 8.7 percent, from 10.2 percent a year ago.

IDC said IBM was the No. 1 server maker with 32.3 percent of the market, followed by HP of Palo Alto with 27.8 percent share, and Dell with 10.5 percent share.

Gartner Group of San Jose said Dell was the No. 1 player in the United States in the industry-standard sector of the server market, the fastest growing portion, where servers are developed using off-the-shelf chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

Sun, which has been making a big push with new products designed with AMD chips, was No. 5 in the U.S. sector of that market. Sun's unit shipments of x86 servers grew 71 percent, according to Gartner.

Joe Gonzales, an analyst with Gartner, said HP saw unit shipments of its industry-standard servers fall 9.8 percent in the quarter, due to the hurricanes in September, which caused the company to shut down production in Houston for several days.

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