EMC accelerates external disk storage market lead again

Vendor gobbles up even more market share, but NetApp also enjoys a stellar quarter

EMC continued to dominate the external disk storage market in the first quarter of this year, according to IDC, taking an additional 1.4 points of market share when compared to last year's Q1.

Overall, the market declined annually by 0.9 per cent, with revenue hitting $5.9bn (£3.8bn) compared to $6bn in last year's Q1.

The slump was put down to reduced demand in developed markets, according to IDC's research director for storage Eric Sheppard.

He said: "Emerging markets drove growth within the global market but this was not enough to offset declines elsewhere.

"Independent storage suppliers were better positioned to capitalise on this new level of demand than their competitors, some of whom are currently working through product transitions and declining server sales."

Despite its clear lead of 30.4 per cent share – more than double that of NetApp – EMC failed to boost its revenue by as much as its nearest rival, which was the only other vendor whose sales grew over the same period.

For Q1, EMC's revenue jumped 3.8 per cent annually to $1.8bn, while NetApp's sales over the same period soared 4.5 per cent year on year to $879m, propelling its market share figure from 14.1 per cent to 14.9 per cent.

IBM, Hitachi and HP all saw sales fall.

Joint fourth-place vendor HP suffered the worst decline, with its annual revenue in the market plummeting 17.5 per cent to $501m, shrinking its market share into single digits from 10.2 per cent last year to 8.5 per cent this year.

Third-placed IBM and other joint fourth-place vendor Hitachi's revenue fell by a more modest 5.3 per cent and 6.2 per cent respectively. The duo's respective market shares for Q1 fell annually to 10.9 per cent and 8.9 per cent.

Although EMC tightened its stranglehold on the market, the "others" category also grew annually in Q1.

Revenue generated from all other players in the external disk storage market combined grew year on year by 1.2 per cent, upping their total market share figure by half a point to 26.5 per cent.

IDC published its findings in its Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.