Pure plays pay: EMC, NetApp surge on the storage market share rankings

EMC and NetApp gained share in the first quarter as pure play storage makers shined, according to IDC data.

IDC's market share standings tell the tale:

The IDC data backs up what EMC's Pat Gelsinger said at an investment conference. Gelsinger, president and chief operating officer of EMC’s information infrastructure and cloud services, said Tuesday:

Who are the growers of storage? The pure play guys — EMC and NetApp. Everybody else is trailing the market at that level.

Indeed, EMC's market share ticked up to 24.6 percent in the first quarter and NetApp is in a virtual tie for the No. 2 spot. NetApp had first quarter share of 11.1 percent compared to IBM's 11.7 percent. A year ago, NetApp had first quarter market share of 8.8 percent. NetApp's surge was foreshadowed by strong quarterly results.

Dell's share also increased from 9.7 percent to 10.1 percent in the first quarter.

Overall, the global storage sector is bouncing back, said IDC. Factory revenue in the first quarter surged 17.1 percent in the first quarter to $5 billion for external disk storage systems. Total disk storage systems revenue hit $6.7 billion in the first quarter, up 18.8 percent from a year ago.