Disk storage market shows anemic growth

The total disk storage systems market barely grew in the second quarter at a 0.3 percent year-over-year increase, with a continued drop in high-end storage sales, according to research firm IDC.

During the quarter, the disk storage market raked in US$7.8 billion in revenue, on internal storage sales coming from the Asia Pacific region, and emerging markets, IDC said in a report on Friday.

High-end storage sales, however, fell for the fourth consecutive quarter. At the same time, midrange storage sales also dropped in the period, signaling that "weak demand is spreading to other parts of the market," said IDC analyst Eric Sheppard in the report.

Demand for storage systems has generally been falling in mature markets, as customers rely more on storage optimization technologies to help extend the longevity of their existing systems. But IDC said a bright spot was growth in entry-level storage systems, and increasing sales in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

In the external disk storage market, total revenue shrank in the second quarter by 1.4 percent from last year to reach $5.9 billion. When accounting for both internal and external systems, the total storage capacity shipped in the period was 11.5 exabytes, for a 23.9 percent year-over-year growth, which IDC said was still "relatively low by historic comparisons.'

EMC remained the largest supplier in the total disk storage systems space, but saw its market share fall by over 1 percent from a year ago, to reach 22.7 percent. Nearly all the top storage vendors saw revenue decreases, save for Hewlett-Packard, the second largest vendor, which saw its market share rise to 17.5 percent.

Instead, much of the storage sales growth came from smaller vendors. In the external storage market, EMC also led with a 30.1 percent share, while NetApp held on to the second spot, with a 13 percent share.