Storage market on the up as economic headwinds ease

EMC comes out on top as market's biggest share gainer

The storage market has returned to growth after "breaking free" from market headwinds, according to IDC, which pointed to EMC as the best-performing vendor last quarter.

For the fourth quarter of 2013, the global total (external and internal) disc storage market raked in $8.8bn (£5.26bn), up 1.3 per cent annually and a whopping 17.2 per cent sequentially. In Q3, the market's revenue slumped 5.6 per cent annually.

IDC said the growth in Q4 was down to the easing of external factors which had hampered the market.

"The disk storage systems market was able to break free of recent headwinds due to traditional year-end budget flushes, improved economic sentiment, and a strong desire to address long-standing storage infrastructure inefficiencies," said Eric Sheppard, research director at IDC Storage.

"Industry stakeholders able to capitalise the most on this demand were often those with recent product refreshes and strong go-to-market initiatives targeted at integrated infrastructure and storage optimisation."

Market leader EMC enjoyed an almost 10 per cent boost in revenue in the total disc storage market in Q4, taking its sales figure to $2.28bn and its market share to 25.8 per cent, up from 23.8 per cent a year ago.

Second-place HP and fifth-place NetApp were the other top-five vendors to experience growth in the market last quarter, with their respective sales up 4.3 per cent to $1.44bn and 1.5 per cent to $791m.

IBM was the biggest loser in the top five, with its revenue slumping 11.2 per cent annually to $1.2bn. Dell suffered a similar sales decline, sliding 11 per cent annually to $875m.