Few hints for growth in mixed Q2

Disk storage demand goes up but revenues go down

Global demand for disk storage continues to grow, with 181.6PB shipped during the second quarter of this year, an increase of 36 per cent on the same quarter last year.

However, analyst IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker found factory revenue from disk storage systems was $4.7bn for Q2 2003, down by almost four per cent on the same quarter last year.

John McArthur, group vice-president of storage research at IDC, said: "The results are decidedly mixed, providing no indication of a near-term, global recovery in the disk storage systems market."

In Q2, IDC found that Hewlett Packard led the total disk storage system market, with 26.7 per cent revenue share, followed by IBM and EMC with 20.2 per cent and 12.7 per cent share respectively.

Among the top vendors, IBM and Dell posted the strongest year-on-year gain in market share during Q2, with 2.5 and 1.5 point percentage increases respectively.

According to IDC, total external disk storage system revenues fell by five per cent year-on-year in Q2 to $3.2bn.

HP maintained its top position, with 21.5 per cent revenue share, with EMC number two, with 18.8 per cent share.

In the higher-end open storage area network market, which grew by 12 per cent compared with the same quarter a year ago, IDC found that HP led with 29.7 per cent revenue share, followed by EMC with 25 per cent.

In the network attached storage market, EMC and Network Appliance tied for the number-one position each with 37 per cent market share.

Marlene Yeoman, managing director of distributor Avnet UK, said the UK storage market at the high end has slowed down considerably.

She cited various reasons, including a continued flat economy, sign-off for large purchases taking longer and moving to chief information level instead of purchasing divisions, and resellers concentrating on the services element and not pushing hardware as much.

"End-users are focusing on their own infrastructures being cost effective. They are 'making do', and retaining people is seen as more important than state-of-the-art technology," Yeoman said.