Middle East Storage Market to Increase at 14% CAGR From 2015 to 2025 - Future Market Insights

According to a market report published by Future Market Insights titled Storage Market: Middle East Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2015 – 2025 ($3,500), the Middle East storage market was valued at $1,475.9 million in 2014 and is expected to register a CAGR of 14.4% from 2015 to 2025.

Growth of the Middle East storage market is primarily driven by declining prices of consumer storage devices and advancements in information and social technology.

On the basis of application, the storage market is segmented into consumer storage devices and enterprise storage. The consumer storage segment is further sub-segmented into HDD, SSD, memory card, optical disc and USB flash drive.

The enterprise storage segment is further sub-segmented into flash storage and HDD, cloud-based storage, software-defined storage and hyper-converged infrastructure.

In the consumer storage segment, the reduction in cost of SSD is contributing immensely to the growth of the segment. The consumer storage devices segment was valued $275.5 million in 2014 and is anticipated to register a CAGR of 12.4% during the forecast period 2015-2025.

In terms of volume, the HDD drive segment accounted for 1,533.000 units in 2016 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 12.1% during the forecast period.

The enterprise storage segment is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 14.8% during the forecast period in terms of revenue. Enterprise storage is a common repository for business information, ensuring common data management and providing data recovery solutions. Strong growth witnessed in the cloud computing (due to increased spending on storage by service provider) is the primarily contributing to the growth of the enterprise storage segment in the market.

The cloud-based storage sub-segment is expected to expand at the highest CAGR of 19.1% during the forecast period in terms value. Stability and flexibility offered by the enterprise storage, coupled with its lower cost, is the prime reason responsible for the robust adoption of cloud-based storage across the globe. Cloud computing is a hassle-free and cost-effective storage facility. Recently, in 2014, NetApp reported that its revenue from cloud computing service doubled from that in 2013. In addition, NetApp announced that, globally, over 200 cloud services were based on its technology. EMC is also aggressively targeting the cloud storage market in the region.

Surge in demand for smartphones and other IoT devices and rise in number of social media channels are among the major factors that have increased the need for additional storage facility, which in turn is further driving growth of the enterprise storage segment.

Increased adoption of cloud-based storage in SMBs and in-house data centres is the primary factor responsible for driving growth of the market in the Levant region.

Various verticals, including BFSI and telecommunication and IT, are investing highly on the IT platform for improving their ease of operation, as compared to the conventional storage platform.

The storage market in the GCC region is primarily driven by the emergence of Internet of everything (IoE) and big data.

Rise in number of consumers on social media networks, increase in broadband Internet penetration and proliferation of smartphones are factors that have led to a significant increase in cloud and data center traffic in GCC countries such as UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Growth of the storage flash array sub-segment is a potential revenue opportunity in this market.

Flash-based devices reduce data access time and increase an application’s performance speed. storage solutions vendors are expected to leverage huge benefits from the growing storage flash array sub-segment in view of the increasing demand for SSDs and memory cards.

Leading players in the market are focusing on expanding their cloud offerings portfolio. For instance, Microsoft is investing in cloud storage solutions by building additional data centres and increasing its cloud storage capacity in the existing regions. The company is also increasing its hybrid cloud offerings portfolio through StoreSimple and InMage (a hybrid online cloud storage service for enterprises).

Additionally, EMC is focusing on offering hybrid services by partnering with hybrid cloud service providers around the world.

Key players in the Middle East storage market include: