Computer Market will keep growing

I learned a long time ago that no market grows fast forever....

Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., has chipped in on the gloom and doom scenario as well in a new research report.

"As the use of server virtualization rises, a negative impact on x86 server demand appears all but inevitable," he wrote. "While we still forecast positive x86 server unit growth in 2007 and 2008, our forecast calls for shipments to contract in 2009 and for growth to be about zero between 2007 and 2012, compared with historical double-digit gains."

This analysis varies from wrong, to really really wrong.

I agree with Ashlee Vance in the Register, virtualization is going to drive the demand for huge well-integrated multi-core systems, but there will still be plenty of need for ever more horsepower on the desktop and for dedicated blade or 1U system in the data center to feed specific CPU intensive applications.

I think we will eventually see desktop virtualization follow in the server virtualization footsteps, but when I look down the hall and see dedicated 4 core systems on people's desks, I find it hard to believe that we're going to see a sharp reduction in the growth of this market.