Worldwide disk market gathers pace over 2005
Disk storage systems revenue continues to rise as market records a successful fourth quarter
The total disk storage systems market grew by 13.1 per cent to $6.8bn during the fourth quarter of 2005, according to analyst IDC’s Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker.
Factory revenues grew by 17.9 per cent to $4.7bn in Q4, compared with the same period last year. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 653 petabytes, which represented a growth rate of 54.6 per cent.
Brad Nisbet, programme manager at IDC Storage Systems, said: “Data growth was one driver, but the availability of affordable systems that support multiple tiers of storage to address data protection, business continuity requirements and online, active archives also contributed.”
EMC and Hewlett-Packard (HP) took the top two positions in the external disk storage systems market, with 20.6 per cent and 18 per cent market share respectively.
However, both vendors saw their market shares decline, compared with Q4 2004: EMC’s fell by 1.2 per cent, and HP’s fell by 0.8 per cent. Rev-enues on disk storage systems for EMC and HP were $962m and $838m respectively.
EMC also continued to lead the worldwide external disk storage market for 2005, with a market share of 20.7 per cent. This represents a decline of 0.4 per cent, and revenue increase of 10.2 per cent to $3.3bn, both from the same period last year.
In terms of disk technology growth during Q4, the NAS market grew by 23.3 per cent year-on-year. The iSCSI SAN market grew by 130 per cent, compared with $94m in Q4 2004.
IDC also claimed that the global disk storage systems market’s “sweet spot” for 2005 was in systems priced between $50,000 and $149,999, which it found grew to over $1bn in value during Q4.
Gerard Marlow, business development manager at storage distributor Hammer, said: “All segments are showing strong signs of growth. Compliance and business data requirements are helping to fuel an expansive growth for disk-based storage.”
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