The total disk storage systems market grew to US$6.1bn, up 7.2pc from last year. Total disk storage system capacity shipped surpassed 1,000 petabytes, growing 60.4pc over the first quarter of 2006, according to IDC.
Worldwide external storage industry revenues grew 5.9pc or US$239m in the first quarter of 2007 to hit US$4.3bn. However, the market is threatened by trends such as server virtualisation and the adoption of multi-core processors, IDC said.
“External storage systems selling under US$50,000 drove the growth in the first quarter of 2007,” said Brad Nisbet, programme manager, IDC Storage Systems.
“After several quarters of impressive growth in 2006 for mid-range and high-end systems selling with average prices above US$50,000, we saw only modest gains in these systems this quarter.
“The growth in lower-end products indicates opportunity across the board as customers continue to invest in a broad spectrum of available storage solutions,” Nisbet said.
For the first quarter, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.2pc revenue share, followed by HP and IBM in a statistical tie for the No 2 position with 13.4pc and 12.7pc revenue share respectively.
Dell and Hitachi rounded out the top five (in a statistical tie for the fourth position) with 8.9pc and 8.5pc respectively. Among the top five suppliers, Dell posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth (12pc) during Q1.
The total network disk storage market – NAS (network attached storage) combined with open SAN (storage area networks) – posted 14.3pc year-over-year growth in the first quarter to more than US$3bn.
EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 26.9pc revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 13.5pc and 11.4pc revenue share, respectively.
“External direct-attached storage continues to decline, being cannibalised primarily by network storage systems,” said Natalya Yezhkova, research manager, IDC Storage Systems.
“The other threat to external DAS is coming from internal storage that grew at 10.5pc in the first quarter of 2007,” Yezhkova revealed.
“Developments in the server market, including server virtualisation and the adoption of multi-core processors, has lead to deployments of servers with larger storage capacity, thus adding to the decline in external DAS (direct attached storage),” she said.
By John Kennedy
