Dell, IBM and HP lose ground in storage market
ECB disk storage market grew for a 13th consecutive quarter, according to Gartner
Dell, IBM and HP have all "continued to underperform" in the worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage market, according to Gartner, despite the market experiencing its 13th consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth.
For the final three months of 2012, worldwide ECB market revenue grew 1.9 per cent to $6bn (£3.95bn) annually – a figure described by the analysts as "anaemic" and a reflection of the "dour macroeconomics" in Europe and North America.
Dell's Q4 revenue slumped 5.7 per cent year on year to $393m, taking its market share down from seven per cent to 6.5 per cent for the same period.
HP's quarterly revenue dropped 13.7 per cent annually to $479m, meaning its share of the market for Q4 fell from 9.4 to 7.9 per cent, when compared with 2011.
IBM's sales for the quarter dipped by 0.1 per cent to $977m, leading its market share to slip from 16.5 to 16.2 per cent, also for the fourth quarter.
Gartner put the trio's woes down to their inability to sell enough new products to cover the drop in sales of the older technologies they are replacing.
It further cited organisational and structural issues as reasons for a sales slump at Dell, while it reckons HP struggled to balance the decline in what it classifies as "traditional storage" with its growing converged go-to-market model.
EMC, HDS and NetApp beat the year-on-year market growth rate in Q4, according to Gartner, which put EMC's 6.7 per cent annual revenue growth down to its VNX, VMAX and Data Domain platforms' success.
The analyst claimed HDS' 2.2 per cent annual revenue growth to $570m for Q4 was down to its strong VSP offering, while improving traction in NetApp's Data Ontap product led to 2.8 annual revenue growth, taking its sales figure for the quarter to $637m.
For the full year, the worldwide ECB market revenue totalled $22.3bn, a 4.9 per cent year-on-year rise, according to Gartner's Quarterly Statistics: Disk Array Storage, All Regions, All Countries, 4Q12 Update.