Shuttle Computer said Tuesday sales of its XPC small form-factor barebones saw a substantial increase in the first half of this year. The company claims that the growth compared to the previous year is about 47% and acceptance of the company’s barebones continues to rally.

SFF Growth Slowdowns

According to a statement today, in the first half of 2004 Shuttle managed to sell 323 thousand of XPC small form-factor barebones, up from 219 thousand in the first half of 2003. The firm said it expected to sell approximately 700 thousand of its SFF systems this year in total, down from 750 thousand anticipated earlier. Although the numbers seem to be appealing, the growth of the company’s barebone business seems to show signs of slowdown.

The first Shuttle XPC emerged in 2001 and was considered as a rather exotic type of PCs. However, because of small form-factor, style, quiet operation and upgradeability, XPC cubes from Shuttle quickly became very popular among end-users, who require such peculiarities. Shuttle’s XPC shipments were between 550 and 600 thousand of units in 2003, a 120% to 140% growth from 2002’s 250 thousand of Shuttle SFF PCs. In case Shuttle manages to sell 700 thousand of XPC systems this year, it will post 16% to 27% growth in revenues from its barebone division.

More Barebones, Custom-Made PCs

In an attempt to occupy larger market segments, Shuttle has been consistently broadening its XPC lineup: currently the company supplies loads of small-form factor barebones for PCs aimed at business, home, multimedia and gaming users.

In addition to barebones intended for users who are able to install additional computer parts themselves along with OEMs, Shuttle also offers its build-to-order PCs for customers in the USA and plans to launch similar business in the EU this Fall, indicating the firm’s serious intentions to become a system integrator rather than a just another component manufacturer. Shuttle offers configure-to-order system solutions in the range in price between $799 and $2999, depending on configuration. The personal computers from Shuttle include the company’s own LCD monitors.

Shuttle Continues to Dominate XPC Market

Market Intelligence Center (MIC) based in Taiwan said late last year that share of mini-barebone computers among all desktops shipped in 2003  was 1.5% – that is more than 1.60 million of units. Roughly 30% of the market was occupied by Shuttle, while the remaining tens of companies, including MSI, IWILL, Soltek, Gigabyte, Biostar, ASUS, ECS, ABIT, FIC and loads of others, share the remaining 60% or about a million of units.

MIC predicted that this year SFF mini-barebone shipments would reach 1.9 million of units, growing about 20% to 25%, which is almost is in-line with Shuttle’s expectations and is likely to sustain Shuttle’s leadership position in the market of barebones.