Any claims by Intel that the Itanium processor is an "industry standard" will look more than foolish now that HP has captured an astonishing 90 per cent of the Itanium server market.

A fresh set of first quarter sales figures from Gartner show that HP now owns 90 per cent of Itanic server shipments and 82 per cent of Itanic server revenue. HP's share increased from the 80 per cent shipment/70 per cent revenue mark reported by Gartner in the same quarter last year. The gains made by HP are good news for the company as it transitions away from PA-RISC and Alpha but bad news for other Itanium backers.

HP shipped 7,200 Itanium servers during the first quarter – up from 5,400 boxes in last year's Q1.

The second largest Itanic vendor is SGI, which just filed for bankruptcy protection. SGI's first quarter server shipments fell to just 230 units, down from 244 last year. NEC's shipments fell from 186 units to 145 units; Fujitsu gained share by selling 131 systems versus 68 last year; and Hitachi moved 125 systems in the first quarter as compared to 61 last year.

IBM shipped 114 boxes, Groupe Bull shipped 81 and Unisys shipped an impressive 22 boxes, breaking the tough baker's dozen mark.

In terms of revenue, HP moved $512m worth of Itanium systems up from $331m last year. NEC shipped $37m worth of systems, SGI shipped $31m, Fujitsu shipped $17m, Bull shipped $13m, Unisys shipped $7m and IBM shipped $6m.

We take it IBM was rather heavily discounting its few remaining Itanic systems, as it pulls out of the market.

All told, Itanium accounts for .4 per cent of all processor sales.

It's hard to imagine how the likes of SGI, Bull and Unisys can justify their $10bn backing of the Itanium Solutions Alliance given these figures. ®