External disk storage market sees no sign of slowing

According to the International Data Corp. (IDC), global external disk storage systems factory revenues registered 10.8 percent growth YoY in 3Q11, reaching about $5.8 billion

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market topped $7.6 billion in revenues, representing 8.5 percent growth from 3Q10. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 5,429 petabytes, growing 30.7 percent YoY.

"The 3Q11 was a strong quarter for enterprise storage, posting solid growth in factory revenue and signaling a return to business as normal," noted Liz Conner, senior research analyst at IDC. "The trend of increased spending during the economic recovery period, specifically on high-end systems, has started to draw to a close. As IDC predicted, YoY growth has started to slow and is now approaching pre-economic crisis levels."

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 28.6 percent revenue share in Q3, followed by IBM and NetApp for second with 12.7 percent and 12.1 percent market share, respectively. HP ended the quarter in fourth position, with 11.3 percent. Hitachi and Dell finished for fifth with 8.8 percent and eight percent market share, respectively.

The total open networked disk storage market climbed 12.3 percent YoY in Q3 to about $4.9. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 31.3 percent revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 14.4 percent.

In the Open SAN market that grew 16.1 percent YoY, EMC was the leading vendor with 25.3 percent revenue share, followed by IBM in second and HP in third with 15.4 percent and 14 percent share, respectively.

The NAS market grew 3.5 percent YoY, led by EMC with 46.7 percent revenue share and followed by NetApp with 30.9 percent. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong growth, posting 19.5 percent revenue growth compared last year. Dell led the market with 30.3 percent revenue share, followed by EMC in second with 19.2 percent and HP in third with 14 percent.

In total, global disk storage systems market saw EMC finish in the top position followed by HP with market shares of 21.7 percent and 18.9 percent, respectively.