Storage revenue edges downward

The worldwide disk storage market saw both gains and losses in the second quarter of 2003, according to market researcher IDC.

Global revenue declined to $4.73 billion in the second quarter, down slightly from $4.8 billion in the first quarter and down 3.9 percent compared with the second quarter of 2002. Revenue fell despite 36 percent year-over-year growth in storage capacity to 181.6 petabytes shipped during the second quarter. (One petabyte is equal to a million gigabytes.)

"We saw significant declines in Asia, particularly in Japan," John McArthur, group vice president of storage research at IDC, said in a statement. "The results are decidedly mixed, providing no indication of a near-term, global recovery in the disk storage systems market."