Sun Microsystems reported its revenues dropped by 20 percent in its third quarter, and made a net loss of $201 million on revenues of $3.27 billion.
That compares unfavourably to the same period last year, when Sun turned in a net loss of $34 million on revenues of $3.27 billion.
Financial gentlemen believe that concerns about the future of Sun Microsystems may have caused corporations to stop buying kit. Last week Oracle said it would buy the firm for $7.4 billion, following earlier attempts by IBM to snap up the struggling firm.
But it’s more likely that Sun Microsystem, like many another technology corporation, is suffering from the Credit Crunch Blues. Purse strings everywhere are tied in a tricky knot with corporations counting their pennies until things become a little clearer worldwide.
What’s particularly worrying for Sun is that it’s high end systems which use SPARC RISC chips fell by almost a third during the firm’s third quarter.
While Sun also sells systems based on X86 architecture, sales of these sort of systems also fell by a fifth. But that’s in line with statements made by AMD’s CEO Dirk Meyer, who said in a financial conference call recently that few corporations and large organisations are prepared to spend on server systems right now.
