Under $10K NAS Appliance Market at $421 Million in 2010, +50% From 2009

Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its new NAS Appliances market share and forecast report, which tracks NAS appliances priced under US$10K by form factor (tower and rack-mount).

Netgear and Qnap lead the NAS appliance market
             (2010 WW market share)
             
          
(Source: Infonetics Research)

"Part of the 2010 growth story for the NAS appliance market is economic recovery, and this will play a diminished, though important, role going forward. The primary market drivers – storage expansion and centralized storage adoption – will take over from there, driving annual global revenue to more than double between 2010 and 2015," expects Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research.

NAS Appliance Market Highlights:

• NAS appliance revenue jumped to $421 million worldwide in 2010, up almost 50% over 2009
• For the quarter, the NAS appliance market finished strong, with revenue up 16% sequentially in 4Q10
• The vast majority of SMBs buy tower NAS appliances, but because of the higher cost of rack-mount systems (approximately 4x that of towers), worldwide revenue from the 2 segments is relatively close
• In 2009, NETGEAR led the worldwide NAS appliance market by a wide margin, but in 2010, newcomer QNAP pulled even with NETGEAR
• Average revenue per unit (ARPU) for NAS appliances is holding steady, buoyed by continuously updated product portfolios, including higher storage capacity and new features like cloud integration

Infonetics’ NAS Appliances report provides market size, market share, forecasts through 2015, and analysis for NAS appliances costing less than US$10K, by form factor (tower and rack-mount). Companies tracked include Buffalo, Dell, D-Link, NETGEAR, QNAP, Drobo, EMC, HP, Iomega, LaCie, Seagate, Synology, Western Digital, and others.