Storage market stable but EMEA feeling the squeeze

Figures from both IDC and Gartner show solid growth, but mature markets begin to lag

The storage hardware market continued to perform solidly in 2012's second quarter, with both IDC and Gartner pegging annual growth in the mid-single digits.

Gartner reports that worldwide external controller-based disk storage sales in Q2 rose 6.7 per cent to almost $5.5bn (£3.4bn). IDC, meanwhile, claims external disk storage revenue was up 6.5 per cent to just under $6bn.

Both market watchers place EMC as the market's biggest vendor, holding more than 30 per cent of the market. In the second spot is IBM, followed by NetApp, HP, Hitachi and Dell, all of whom have market share somewhere between seven and 14 per cent.

IDC reports that the total disk storage market grew eight per cent year on year to a worth of $8.1bn in Q2. The total capacity of units shipped during the quarter rose almost a quarter to 6,667 petabytes, claimed the analyst.

Liz Conner, senior research analyst, storage systems at IDC, said: "Despite concerns regarding the global and regional economies, end users continue to invest in storage infrastructures. Helping to drive the worldwide market in Q2 was the double-digit growth in the emerging regions and strong demand for mid-range storage."

Gartner claims the 6.7 per cent growth posted last quarter fell some way short of its expectation of a 7.9 per cent expansion. The "dour economy" EMEA region was singled out as performing particularly disappointingly, with sales growing just 2.6 per cent against a 7.4 per cent forecast.

Roger Cox, research vice president at Gartner, said: "Although the hard-disk drive supply issues created by the October 2011 Thailand flood was no longer an impediment on meeting user demand, the economy in certain regions had a debilitating impact on vendor revenue in the second quarter of 2012."