IDC hails worldwide disk market growth

Analyst's quarterly disk tracker reveals market share losses for Dell

Revenues in the worldwide disk storage market were up 12 per cent on last year and topped $7.5bn during the first quarter of 2011, claims IDC.

The analyst house hailed the results of its Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, by declaring the Q1 figures proof that end-user budget constraints may be easing.

Amita Potnis, senior research analyst of storage systems at IDC, said: "The worldwide disk storage market is off to a strong start in 2011.

"Although the market declined sequentially in the first quarter, year-over-year growth can be seen as end users are taking advantage of easing budget constraints while adopting [the] new capabilities available in the market," she added.

Storage vendor EMC was the top-performing disk vendor during Q1, in revenue and market share terms, with sales up by nearly 25 per cent on last year.

HP and IBM came in second and third, respectively, both having achieved modest year-on-year market share gains of 0.3 per cent.

Dell was fourth and was the only vendor in the top five to see its market share shrink, from 12.7 per cent in Q1 2010 to 11.4 per cent this year.

Rounding out the top five was NetApp, with year-on-year revenue growth of nearly 40 per cent. It is also achieved a near two per cent rise in market share, from 8.2 per cent in Q1 2010 to 10.1 per cent this year.