With competition in the storage marketplace intense this quarter, EMC was knocked out of first place in key market revenue areas, including network-attached storage (NAS) and open storage-area networks (SAN), a report from market research firm IDC shows.
In a marketplace marked by declining sales, Network Appliance took the lead from EMC this past quarter in the NAS area, with 38 percent revenue share compared with EMC's 31 percent. Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC had previously led the marketplace for several quarters. In the open SAN market, Hewlett-Packard Co. nudged EMC out of the top spot, taking 30 percent revenue share, compared with EMC's 27 percent.
Overall, EMC saw its worldwide disk sales drop 21 percent quarter-to-quarter, according to the report. Tokyo-based Hitachi Ltd. and IBM Corp. saw significant overall disk storage growth this past quarter, up 23 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
EMC did hold onto its lead in overall network storage market sales (NAS combined with open SAN), with 28 percent revenue share, according to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC. HP maintained its market share lead in terms of total storage revenue, with 27 percent market share, followed by IBM with 20 percent.
Worldwide disk storage systems factory revenue was down 3 percent this past quarter, to US$4.7 billion, according to the report. The NAS market declined 10 percent, and the open SAN market dropped 6 percent overall.
"The declining revenue picture can sometimes be misleading," said John McCarthy, vice president of storage research at IDC. "The trend towards networked storage continues, which means that suppliers have to look beyond revenue to see that capacity growth of networked storage exceeds the growth of direct-attached storage."