Revenue Down for Top 5 Storage Leaders – but Hitachi – From 2Q12 to 3Q12

WW external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 3.3%, totaling just over $5.9 billion in 3Q12, according to the IDC Corp.‘s Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market posted just under $7.9 billion in revenues, representing 3.7% growth from the prior year’s third quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 7,104 petabytes, growing 24.4% year over year.

"The external disk storage system market continues to exhibit steady growth, posting solid third quarter factory revenues of just over $5.9 billion," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "End users continue to invest in storage infrastructures despite persistent concerns surrounding global and regional economies. Helping to drive the worldwide market in the third quarter was the double-digit growth in multi-protocol storage architecture and strong demand for upper mid-range and high-end storage."

"The disk storage systems market crossed an important milestone in the third quarter when the new capacity consumption surpassed seven exabytes for the first time," said Eric Sheppard, research director, Storage Systems. "This milestone occurred at a time of unfavorable economic conditions in Europe and improved utilization rates contributable to storage optimization technologies, suggesting demand for storage capacity is outstripping market headwinds."

3Q12 External Disk Storage Systems Results
EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 30.0% revenue share in the third quarter, followed by NetApp and IBM, which are tied for second with 11.9% and 11.7% market share, respectively. Hitachi and HP finished the quarter in a statistical tie for the fourth position with 9.7% market shares each.

Open Networked Disk Storage Systems Highlights
The total open networked disk storage market (NAS combined with open / iSCSI SAN) grew 4.7% year over year in the third quarter to just over $5.1 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 33.5% revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 13.7% revenue share.

In the open SAN market, which grew 4.4% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 29.8% revenue share, followed by IBM in second with 14.0% market share and Hitachi and HP tied for third with 12.2% and 11.8% shares, respectively.

The NAS market increased 5.7% year over year, led by EMC with 43.6% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 29.4% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show good growth, posting 6.9% revenue growth compared to the prior year’s quarter. Dell led the market with 28.3% revenue share, followed by EMC in second with 19.8% market share. NetApp was in third with 13.3% market share.
 
3Q12 WW External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue
                           
(Revenue in million)

 (Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems
 Quarterly Tracker, December 6, 2012)
 

3Q12 Total Disk Storage Systems Market Results
In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, EMC finished in the top position followed by HP with market shares of 22.7% and 17.9% respectively.

   
3Q12 Total Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue
                      
(Revenue in million)

(Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, December 6, 2012)
 

Taxonomy Notes:
IDC defines a disk storage s ystem 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. OEM sales are not included in this study. In this study, HDS sales do not reflect their OEM sales to Sun Microsystems and HP.