EARTH SCIENCES

SANTA CLARA, CA -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) demonstrated market acceptance in a tough economy by growing UNIX®/RISC unit market share in calendar year 2001 at the expense of major competitors. According to Gartner Dataquest's Q4 US Server Database Report, Sun remains the number one leader in UNIX/RISC units and revenue by a wide margin. Over the past five years, Sun has grown its market position to a solid number one in UNIX/RISC systems. The company's focus on systems design and best-of-breed solutions is reflected in its competitive strength. Maintaining its hold on the UNIX server landscape, Sun again holds the number one UNIX/RISC server vendor position in the US, shipping two out of every three systems. With over 34,000 unit shipments in Q4, Sun captures the lion's share of the market with 68.5 percent, more than double that of its nearest three competitors combined. While the economy continues to put a squeeze on the UNIX/RISC server market in general, Sun demonstrated 13.5 percent sequential quarterly growth in shipments. Sun ended the 2001 calendar year strong, resulting from the positive momentum generated from its roll out of the highly anticipated 900 MHz UltraSPARC(TM) III Cu processor, the launch of its new line of Sun Fire Midframe servers, as well as the debut of its flagship high-end Sun Fire 15K server. And rapid acceptance of the new Sun Fire v880 system has resulted in the fastest ramp of any new Sun product. Customers, many of which are brand new Sun customers, are consistently choosing Sun over competitors for their server consolidation, mainframe rehosting and mission-critical data center needs. Sun's seamless transition to its new UltraSPARC III based systems is reflected in its sequential quarterly growth leadership position. The new Sun Fire product line -- from entry to high-end -- brought in over one billion dollars in US revenue for the 2001 calendar year. ``Even in a troubled economy, Sun is undaunted, winning customer after customer in competitive deals worldwide,'' said Shahin Khan, chief competitive officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc. ``The numbers prove that Sun's rock solid reliable and massively scalable server line is what the market wants. The need for simplicity, reliability and scalability is driving the demand for UNIX/RISC servers and Sun's SPARC/Solaris(TM) offering is continuously the platform of choice.'' For more information visit www.sun.com