If everything had gone according to plan, sales of Itanium-based servers would have totaled $28bn in 2004. That figure takes into account boom-time spending, flawless execution from Intel and widespread support for the chip. How far did Itanium end up from this vision of perfection? Really bloody far. Total Itanium server sales hit $1.4bn in 2004, according to IDC. The same analyst firm tossed out the $28bn figure in 2000 right before the first Itanium chip hit the market. It must be comforting for those of you who pay IDC thousands of dollars to see it miss a forecast by 95 per cent. Mostly pleased Intel investors must also be a tad curious about promises unkept.
All, however, is not as bleak as it seems. Itanium did show solid gains from 2003 to 2004. Vendors moved 18,730 Itanium servers worth $479m in 2003 compared to 33,623 servers and that $1.4bn in 2004, IDC said. The folks at Gartner calculated revenue of $1.5bn - close to that of IDC - but said 2004 server sales came in at just 26,005 units.