EMC cements in lead as storage market grows

EMC has held onto the top spot in the external disk storage market in the face of a surging NetApp, according to first-quarter figures from IDC.

Overall, factory sales of external disk storage systems pulled in $5.6bn (£3.4bn) in the first three months of 2011, a rise of 13.2 percent year-on-year, IDC said in a statement on Friday.

EMC kept the lead with 27.3 percent of the market, up from 24.8 percent. It took in $1.52bn in revenue, an increase of 24.7 percent over the first quarter in 2010. Second-place NetApp saw sales grow by 37.8 percent to $757m, up from $549m, to take 13.5 percent of the market. IBM was third with 12.2 percent market share, and HP fourth with 10.5 percent.

"Although the market declined sequentially in the first quarter, due to a seasonal budget flush in [the fourth quarter], year-over-year growth can be seen as end-users are taking advantage of easing budget constraints while adopting new capabilities available in the market," Amita Potnis, a senior storage analyst at IDC, said in the statement.

Sales in networked disk storage — which covers NAS plus open or iSCSI SAN — rose 17.3 percent year-on-year, according to IDC. EMC and NetApp had the top two spots in this sector too, the market research company said.

Sales of NAS systems increased by 27.1 percent, while the iSCSI SAN market increased by 23 percent. Dell led in iSCSI SAN, with HP and EMC shared second place.

"Strong growth in key midrange... and high-end... segments helped drive overall year-over-year gains in the first quarter," said IDC senior storage systems analyst Liz Conner. "Products offering scale-out architecture, file storage, and capacity optimizing features, such as data deduplication, helped drive the midrange market, while the high-end saw a renewed interest in Fibre Channel."