Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 20.4%, totaling just over $5.0 billion, in the second quarter of 2010 (2Q10), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker. For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to $6.8 billion in revenues, representing 20.7% growth from the prior year's second quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 3,645 petabytes, growing 54.6% year over year.

"The first half of 2010 showed continued signs of economic recovery in the disk storage systems market," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "The external disk storage systems market grew 18.6% from the first half of 2009 in terms of factory revenue and 3.0% from the second half of 2009. Although the first half of 2009 was extremely weak due to the economic crisis, the gain from a relatively strong second half of 2009 shows continued customer investment and importance placed in the storage systems market."

Total External Disk Storage Systems

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 25.7% revenue share in the second quarter, followed by IBM in second with 13.6% market share. NetApp and HP are in a statistical tie* for third place with 11.4% and 11.3% market share respectively. Dell ended in the fifth position with 9.4% market share. Given the recent interest in 3PAR, IDC notes that for 2Q10, 3PAR’s share in the total external disk storage systems market was 0.58%.

Open Networked Disk Storage Systems

The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 29.2% year over year in the second quarter to $4.2 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 28.9% revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 13.6% revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which grew 21.8% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 21.8% revenue share, followed by IBM in second and HP in third with 15.9% and 14.8% share, respectively.

The NAS market grew 51.1% year over year, led by EMC with 45.6% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 25.2% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong momentum, posting 49.0% revenue growth compared to the prior year's quarter. Dell led the market with 32.9% revenue share, followed by HP, NetApp, and EMC, all in a statistical tie* for second, with 14.2%, 13.4%, and 13.3% market share respectively.

"The recent economic crisis had greatly affected the upper mid-range and high-end storage market," said Amita Potnis, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "The second quarter saw a good recovery of the upper mid-range (PB $100K-$249.99K) and high-end (PB $250K+) storage market with year-over-year growth of 30.5%. The recovery in this segment was driven by NAS and SAN system sales, which grew 58.4% and 30.2% respectively, exceeding the overall market growth. It appears, however, that the market is heading toward a more cautious growth path going forward."

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Second Quarter of 2010

(Revenues are in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, September 3, 2010

* Notes:

• IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide disk storage market when there is less than one percent difference in the factory revenues of two or more vendors.
• Starting in Q3 2009, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Data Domain. Starting in Q2 2010, HP is reported as the combined entity of HP and H3C.

Total Disk Storage Systems Market

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, HP and EMC finished in a statistical tie* for the top position, in terms of market share, with HP at 19.3% market share and EMC at 19.0% market share.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Total Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Second Quarter of 2010

(Revenues are in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, September 3, 2010

* Notes:

• IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide disk storage market when there is less than one percent difference in the factory revenues of two or more vendors.
• Starting in Q3 2009, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Data Domain. Starting in Q2 2010, HP is reported as the combined entity of HP and H3C.

Taxonomy Notes:

IDC defines a Disk Storage System as a set of storage elements, including controllers, cables, and (in some instances) host bus adapters, associated with three or more disks. A system may be located outside of or within a server cabinet and the average cost of the disk storage systems does not include infrastructure storage hardware (i.e. switches) and non-bundled storage software.

The information in this quantitative study is based on a branded view of the disk storage systems sale. Revenue associated with the products to the end user is attributed to the seller (brand) of the product, not the manufacturer. Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) sales are not included in this study. In this study, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) sales do not reflect their OEM sales to Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.

IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the global disk storage market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly shipments and revenues (both customer and factory), Terabytes, $/Gigabyte, Gigabyte/Unit, and Average Selling Value. Each criteria can be segmented by location, installation base, operating system, vendor, family, model, and region.

For more information about IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, please contact Hoang Nguyen at 508-935-4718 or hnguyen@idc.com.

About IDC

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