WW Disk Storage Systems Revenue Decreased 12% in 2009

Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted a year-over-year decline of 0.7%, totaling $5.3 billion, in the fourth quarter of 2009 (4Q09), according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker from International Data Corporation.

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to $7.3 billion in revenues, representing 0.2% growth from the prior year’s fourth quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 3,304 petabytes, growing 33.4% year over year.

"Although 2009 might have gotten off to a rough start, it ended on a strong note," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "Total (internal plus external) factory revenue for the fourth quarter posted the first year-over-year growth since the third quarter of 2008. Although Q4 is traditionally a strong quarter, 4Q09 accounted for 29.7% of the revenues for 2009, compared to 26.2% for Q408. Much of this increase was driven by Open Networked Storage, which posted its first year-over-year growth, of 3.6%, since the fourth quarter of 2008."

Total External Disk Storage Systems
EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 23.7% revenue share in the fourth quarter, followed by IBM, with 16.8% market share. HP ended in the third position with 12.1% market share. NetApp and Dell finished the quarter in a statistical tie for fourth position with 8.3% and 8.1% revenue share respectively.

Open Networked Disk Storage Systems
The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 3.6% year over year in the fourth quarter to $4.2 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 27.9% revenue share, followed by IBM with 16.0% revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which grew 0.9% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 20.4% revenue share, followed by IBM with 19.3% share.

The NAS market grew 12.6% year over year, led by EMC with 50.5% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 20.2% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong momentum, posting 40.6% revenue growth compared to the prior year’s quarter. Dell led the market with 29.2% revenue share, followed by HP with 18.5%.

"Network Attached Storage (NAS) now represents 20% of external disk storage systems factory revenue as users look for storage solutions to help them deal with the continued growth IDC sees with unstructured, file-based data," said Steve Scully, research manager, Enterprise Storage. "The growing number of unified storage solutions has made it easier for customers to implement one platform for multiple file-based and block-based storage workloads."

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Fourth Quarter of 2009
(Revenues are in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, March 4, 2010
* Note: Starting in Q3 2009, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Data Domain.

Total Disk Storage Systems Market
In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, HP and IBM finished the fourth quarter in a statistical tie for the top position with 19.8% and 19.3% revenue share, respectively.

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide Total Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue
Fourth Quarter of 2009
(Revenues are in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, March 4, 2010
* Note: Starting in Q3 2009, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Data Domain.

External Disk Storage Systems Market
Full-Year 2009 Results
Factory revenues for the worldwide external disk storage systems market declined 10.2% to $18.1 billion in 2009 compared to 2008. EMC led the market with 22.7% in revenue share followed by IBM with 14.2%

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, 2009
(Revenues are in Millions)

* Note: Starting in Q3 2009, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Data Domain.

Factory revenues for the total disk storage systems market declined by 11.9% to $24.5 billion in 2009 compared to 2008. HP was the leading vendor for the year with 18.4% of the market, followed by IBM and EMC with 16.9% and 16.8% share, respectively.

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide Total Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, 2009
(Revenues are in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, March 4, 2010
* Note: Starting in Q3 2009, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Data Domain.

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.