HDD sales drag down EMEA storage market

Flash sales rose 76.4 per cent in Q3 but traditional hard drives struggle

Declining traditional hard disk sales dragged down the EMEA storage market in Q3, according to IDC.

The analyst's storage tracker found that while all-flash systems saw year-on-year growth of 76.4 per cent and hybrid flash arrays grew 3.5 per cent, HDD sales fell 33.6 per cent and "heavily affected" the overall market.

Supply chain issues and the EMEA economy also contributed to the downturn, according to IDC European storage analyst Silvia Cosso.

"Contingent factors such as macroeconomic volatility and turmoil on the supply side, coupled with acceleration in cloud deployment and infrastructure consolidation, are pushing the EMEA market into negative territory for the seventh quarter in a row," said Cosso.

"On the bright side, the AFA [all-flash array] segment kept very strong momentum in the region, almost doubling its shares compared with the same period a year ago, further improving workload consolidation."

All the top four vendors saw year-on-year market share dips, with IBM taking the biggest hit at 17 per cent.

Newly formed Dell Technologies sits at the top of the vendor table, but saw a 13.7 per cent year-on-year drop in market share, based on Dell and EMC's combined figures from Q3 last year.

Fifth-placed Hitachi was the only vendor in the top five to see growth, increasing its share by 50.7 per cent to just under 10 per cent.