Novell claims Linux lead in China

Novell Inc. took the lead in China’s Linux server operating system market with the largest share of revenue and unit shipments during the first half of this year, according to market researcher IDC.

The company captured nearly a third of market revenue, or 32.9 percent, compared to 29.5 percent for second place finisher Turbolinux Inc. and 24.0 percent for Red Flag Software Co. Ltd, China’s home-grown Linux provider.

In terms of unit shipments, Novell captured 30 percent of China’s market for Linux server operating systems, with Turbolinux nipping at its heels with 29.9 percent and Red Flag finishing with 27.2 percent, according to IDC’s study.

The data shows a strong comeback for Novell. In the same period last year, the company held only a 5 percent share of the market in both revenue and shipments.

“We think our success is due to our active investment in China over the last year. We hired personnel with strong standing in the Linux industry in the region … [and] landed some partnerships with critical local companies,” said Bruce Lowry, director of global public relations for Novell, in an e-mail to IDG News Service.

He said the hiring of a new managing director in Asia, Sen Ming Chang, gave Novell a big boost. Chang used to be IBM Corp.’s director of Linux for the Greater China region. The term ‘Greater China’ generally refers to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In addition, new partnerships with some of China’s top IT companies, like Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and China Standard Software Co. Ltd. (CS2C), helped Novell compete, he said.

But Turbolinux could topple Novell from its perch later this year. In April, the company signed a high profile deal with China’s largest bank. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) plans to roll out Turbolinux’s Turbolinux 7 DataServer operating system on servers across its network of 20,000 national branches over three years, in what may be the biggest Linux deployment yet in China.

IDC would not comment on the China server operating system study, since it was done for a specific client and was not published generally.

“Novell commissioned this study from IDC,” said David Kao, in public relations at IDC in China.

(IDC is owned by International Data Group, the parent company of IDG News Service.)