Gartner Dataquest has released a new report on the server market during the September quarter that has some surprising results for Mac Observers. According to Dataquest, Apple is the number 5 server vendor in the US market, though Apple didnit register on the world market. Appleis new found server strength comes after Apple introduced the Xserve, its rack mount dual-processor server powered by an unlimited client-license Mac OS X Server.

Apple shows up with some 5,700 units shipped, up 273% over the year ago period, when the company shipped some 1,525 servers. That represents a market share of 1.2%, up from .4% from last year. From Dataquest:

The United States server market continued to show signs of recovery with a 12.2 percent increase in the third quarter of 2002, with shipments of 488,858 units, up from 435,620 in the third quarter of 2001 (see Table 2). Dell regained the No.1 position in the U.S server market garnering 26.3 percent of the market. HP fell to second place with 25.9 percent market share, followed by IBM, Sun Microsystems and Apple, respectively.

Appleis position at #5 does not make the company a powerhouse, as it distantly trails #4 vendor, Sun, with less than 1/6 that companyis server shipments, but Xserve shipments represent a revenue stream almost totally new to Apple.

The report indicates that server shipments increased by some 3.1% across the board, but stresses that this is because of the damage done to the economy by the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center last September. At that time, computer shipments fell off drastically. The report does not offer additional commentary concerning Apple.