Disk-based storage did well in the third quarter this year, as the size of the worldwide disk storage systems market grew at a record rate of 13.3 percent to $5.7 billion.
IDC said external storage sales grew a record 12.5 percent from the year-ago quarter to $3.9 billion, the best growth rate since the research company began tracking sales in 2001.
EMC held its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 20.3 percent, with HP and IBM posting 19.1 percent and 12.9 percent revenue share, respectively.
However, EMC slipped almost a full percentage point from both the second quarter of 2005 and the third quarter of 2004, having posted market share of 21.2-21.3 percent in those quarters. EMC has seen cooling interest in its Symmetrix systems, even though mid-range Clariion sales have rocketed.
Dell improved its share position to end the quarter in a virtual tie with Hitachi for the fourth position with 8.4 percent revenue share versus 8.3 percent for Hitachi. Dell enjoyed the most overall growth in the storage space: 33 percent in external systems, 30.8 percent in the overall market from Q3 2004.
Networked Storage Strong
Led by EMC’s 27.2 percent share, the total network storage market increased 17.1 percent year over year in Q3 to $2.5 billion.
HP was No. 2 with 21.5 percent of this market, which includes network-attached storage (NAS) combined with open and iSCSI storage area networks (SANs).
Breaking out the separate storage approaches, IDC said the Open/iSCSI SAN market grew 19.6 percent year over year, totaling $2 billion in revenue.
EMC and HP still compete for the top position, but remain virtually tied: HP had 25 percent revenue share and EMC had 24.2 percent revenue share for Q3.
EMC is still the NAS market leader, with a commanding 40 percent share. Network Appliance is No. 2, with 35.1 percent, and has argued that it would be in the top NAS spot without the inclusion of content-addressed storage (CAS).
However, NetApp’s 35.1 percent share commands the iSCSI SAN market, besting EMC’s 24 percent market share in a booming niche, with 105 percent revenue growth year over year.
Overall, HP maintained its lead in the total worldwide disk storage systems market (both external and internal), with 23.5 percent revenue share. IBM and EMC followed with 20.7 percent 13.7 percent, respectively.
In other stats, disk storage petabytes grew 58 percent year over year, totaling 505 petabytes.
Article courtesy of InternetNews.com