EMC keeps lead in falling storage market

Factory revenues for worldwide external disk storage systems are falling, says IDC, thanks to a decline in server system sales.

The figure fell 18.3 percent year over year in the second quarter to $4.1 billion, with total disk storage systems factory revenues dropping 18.7 percent to $5.7 billion. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 2,345 petabytes, growing 15.2 percent year over year.

“The enterprise storage systems market continued to feel the impact of current economic conditions, posting its third straight year-over-year decline. However, certain sweet spots in the market continue to thrive,” said Liz Conner, research analyst, Storage Systems. “iSCSI SAN and FC SAN both showed strong year-over-year growth of 57.2 percent and 66.8 percent, respectively, in the entry level price bands ($0K-$14.99K) as customers continue to demand enterprise level network storage at a more economically friendly price point.

Vendor Q209 rev Q2 share Q208rev Q2 share YoY
EMC $887 21.5% $1,101 21.8% -19.5%
IBM $614 14.9% $667 13.2% -8%
HP $469 11.4% $656 13% -28.6%
Dell $404 9.8% $469 9.3% -13.8%
NetApp $368 8.9% $400 8.9% -8.1%
Others $1,380 33.5% $1,751 34.7% -21.2%
All $4,121 100% $5,044 100% -18.3%

(Vendors, worldwide external disk storage system factory revenues in $millions)

“Similarly, midrange NAS (price band $15K-$49.99K) enjoyed solid year-over-year growth of 20.7 percent as file-level data generation continues to be a hot topic for many customers.”

EMC kept its lead in external disk storage systems, with 21.5 percent revenue share in the second quarter, ahead of IBM, with 14.9 percent, and HP with 11.4 percent.

The total network disk storage market dropped 15.3 percent year over year in the second quarter to more than $3.2 billion in revenues. EMC again has the lead, with 26.0 percent revenue share, followed by IBM with 13.8 percent.

In the Open SAN market, which fell 23.8 percent year over year, EMC led with 23.1 percent revenue share. NAS declined 6.8 percent year over year, led by EMC with 38.7 percent revenue share and NetApp with 26.1 percent.

The iSCSI SAN market continued to do well, posting 27.2 percent revenue growth. It’s the only area in which EMC fails to lead, with Dell claiming 35.3 percent revenue share. EMC had 15.7 percent.