Worldwide external disk storage systems’ factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 2,3%, totalling just over $6,7-billion, in the fourth quarter of 2012 (4Q12), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.
For the quarter, the total (internal plus external) disk storage systems market generated $8,6-billion in revenue, representing 0,7% growth from the prior year’s fourth quarter.
Total disk storage systems capacity shipped in 4Q12 reached eight exabytes, growing 25,3% year over year. The external disk storage systems market generated $24,7-billion in sales during the full year, which represented a 4,7% increase over 2011. Total external disk storage systems capacity shipped during the year surpassed 20 exabytes, which represents an increase of 27% over 2011.
“Although the rate of growth decelerated during the quarter, the external disk storage system market finished the year with solid fourth quarter results and even posted a record-breaking $24,7-billion in full year factory revenue,” says Eric Sheppard, research director: storage at IDC.
“FICON attached array sales and network attached storage (NAS) both helped drive the factory revenue increase during the quarter as companies invested in storage required to support mainframe environments and to deal with the continued growth in unstructured data.”
EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 30,7% revenue share in the fourth quarter, followed by IBM and NetApp with 15.0% and 11,6% market share, respectively. HP and Hitachi ended the quarter in a statistical tie* for the number four position with market shares of 9,3% and 8,8%, respectively.
The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 2,6% year over year in the fourth quarter to just over $5,7-billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 34,2% revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 13,7% revenue share.
In the Open SAN market, which grew just 0,3% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 28,7% revenue share, followed by IBM in second with 18% market share and HP and Hitachi tied* for third with 11,9% and 11,4% shares, respectively. The NAS market increased 8,8% year over year, led by EMC with 48,2% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 28,3% share.
