WW Consumer and SMB NAS Market at $12 Billion in 2018 – Report Buyer

This market research report Consumer NAS and SMB NAS Market – Global Outlook and Forecast 2018-2023 (116 pages, April 2018) from Report Buyer offers analysis on market size and forecast, market share, industry trends, growth drivers, and vendor analysis.

The market study also includes insights on segmentation by end-user (consumer, SOHO, SMBs, and SMEs), by form factor (1 bay, 2 bays, 4 bays and 5 bays, and 6 bays to 12 bays), and by geography (North America, Europe, APAC, Latin America, and MEA).

Consumer and SMB NAS Market – Overview
Businesses were looking for safe and secure transfer of file-level data which led to the introduction of NAS over two decades ago. The growing need for end-users to store huge amount of data at a reduced cost compared to cloud-based storage is propelling the growth of the consumer and SMB NAS market.

These services provide remote access to storage through Internet or LAN connectivity at home and help small-scale business to access information at marginal costs.

The vendors are offering multiple features with modern appliances that simplify user interaction with these devices at an affordable cost with reliability and security. The NAS drive vendors are focusing on innovation to improve the capacity of HDD and increase the usage of SSDs for accelerated performance in various appliances in the global market.

The companies are offering these products through retail channels with diskless systems at an affordable cost that ranges based on form factors i.e., 1 to 12 bays to gain a larger market share. Each bay in these systems will accommodate one HDD of up to 12TB. The reduced cost of these drives is expected to enable vendors to offer affordable solutions for end-users in the consumer and SMB NAS market.

The proliferation of Internet connectivity is resulting in the use of various devices such as mobile phones, laptops, and desktop thereby, leading the growth of both personal and business data across end-user segments. The introduction of new devices that enable user-friendly storing, accessing, and sharing of files among end-users at an affordable cost will boost the demand for these appliances.

The global consumer and SMB NAS market is estimated to reach values of around $12 billion by 2018, growing at a CAGR of more than 9% during 2018-2023.

Consumer and SMB NAS Market – Dynamics
The continuous innovations towards IoT by home appliance manufactures and the adoption of smart home and home automation applications will augment the growth of the global consumer and SMB NAS market. The consumers are leveraging smartphones and voice assistant devices to remotely control smart appliances such as fridge, air condition, and washing machine, thermostat, bulbs, and security solutions in the global market. The vendors are integrating the smart appliances with NAS and controlling the operations of devices such as security cameras via remote access provided by the NAS appliances. The manufacturers are launching hybrid solutions that include the use of NAS for video surveillance storage and cloud-based storage for storing appliance operational data in the smart home environment. The integration of such devices will encourage vendors to introduce cost-effective solutions in consumer and SMB NAS market.

Consumer and SMB NAS Market – By End-Users
Adoption of the medium and low-end system by the SMB end-users will boost sales in the consumer and SMB NAS market

The consumer and SMB NAS market by end-users is segmented into consumer, SOHO, SMBs, and SMEs. SMBs dominated the majority of the market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of around 12% during the forecast period. The increasing adoption of the medium and high-end system of 4-bay and 5-bay form factors is propelling the growth of this segment in the global market.

The integration of multiple 10GbE ports and introduction of 25GbE and 50GbE ports in the rackmount appliances will boost the adoption of these systems.

The average costs of 4-bay rackmount diskless systems are around $600 to $800, with the addition of two 10TB hard drives at an overall CAPEX of around $1,400.

With the rising data storage requirements for businesses, high cost in use of cloud-based storage platforms, development of smart workplace, and increasing awareness towards availability of cheaper and efficient alternative to cloud storage will increase the adoption of these applications among SMBs.

Consumer and SMB NAS Market – By Form Factors
HDD ranging from 750Gb to 12TB will transform the global consumer and SMB NAS market

The form factor segment in the consumer and SMB NAS market is classified into 1 bay, 2 bays, 4 bays and 5 bays, and 6 bays to 12 bays. 4 bay and 5 bay occupied the largest market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of approximately 8% during the forecast period.

The introduction of 4-bay and 5-bay diskless systems equipped with up to 5 HDD of capacity ranging from 750Gb to 12TB for each HDD, can provide a total capacity of up to 60TB, through five 12TB HDDs is propelling the growth of this segment.

The extensive use of these form factors to store and share files such as video, photo, audio and others at home and small office environment by consumers, SOHO and SMB end-users will boost the demand for these products.

It is estimated that almost all 4-bay and 5-bay systems will be able to support SSD cache by 2020. The minimum DRAM capacity ideal for optimal performance of these drives is 2GB, where there are also rackmount 4-bay appliances powered by 8GB of DDR3 or DDR4 memory. The growing demand for these systems by professional small office users will result in the growth of this segment in the

Consumer and SMB NAS Market – By Geography
The consumer and SMB NAS market by geography is divided into North America, Europe, APAC, Latin America, and MEA. North America controlled almost half of the market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of over 8% during the forecast period. The presence of multiple SMEs who are colocating spaces in the data center and are focusing procuring infrastructure within their budget to strengthen every aspect of their business operations will augment the growth of the market in North America. The US and Canada are the largest revenues generators in the North America consumer and SMB NAS market. The increasing investment in video analytics and installation of high-resolution cameras is propelling the demand for these applications in the North American market. The growing storage need for personal data, home automation, and video surveillance data by end-users in North America will boost the adoption of NAS.

Major vendors are:
• Apple
• Buffalo Technology
• Netgear
• Qnap Systems
• Seagate
• Synology
• Western Digital Corporation

Other prominent vendors include Asustor, Dell Technologies, D-Link, Drobo, FreeNAS, Infortrend Technology, Promise Technology, Toshiba, Thecus Technology, and Zyxel Communications.