Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Market Delivers Double Digit Annual Growth as Sales Accelerate in the Fourth Quarter

IDC: Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew $708 million in the fourth quarter of 2005 (4Q05), posting 17.9% growth from a year ago to $4.7 billion. For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to $6.8 billion up 13.1% from the prior year's fourth quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 653 petabytes, growing 54.6%.

The external disk storage systems market growth continued to accelerate through the year. Data growth was one driver, but the availability of affordable systems that support multiple tiers of storage to address data protection, business continuity requirements, and online, active archives also contributed.

Total External Disk Storage Systems

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 20.6% revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 18.0% and 15.9% revenue share, respectively. Dell and Hitachi rounded out the top 5 with 9.2% and 7.3%, respectively. Among the top 5 suppliers, Dell and IBM posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during 4Q05, with 54.2% and 46.8% growth, respectively.

Network Disk Storage Systems

The total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open and iSCSI SAN) posted 24.2% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter to more than $3.1 billion. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 26.9% revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 19.7% and 13.6% revenue share, respectively. Dell and IBM posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter, with 64.6% and 54.9% growth, respectively. While IBM’s strong year-over-year growth was due in part to an easy comparison with an unusually weak fourth quarter in 2004, the company achieved its highest quarterly revenue in four years.

In the NAS market, which grew 23.3% year over year, EMC led with 39.5% revenue share, followed by NetApp with 31.8% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong momentum, posting 130.0% revenue growth compared to the prior year's quarter reaching $94 million. Network Appliance continues to lead the market with 26.2% share, followed by EMC with 20.6% share.

The sweet spot in the market during 2005 was systems priced between $50,000 and $149,999. This segment, which serves the needs of a broad range of data centers and applications, grew to over $1 billion in the fourth quarter.

Full Year Results for Disk Storage Systems Market

For the full year, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 20.7% revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 18.3% and 13.6% revenue share, respectively. Dell and Hitachi rounded out the top 5 with 8.4% and 8.0%, respectively. Among the top 5 suppliers, Dell and IBM posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during 2005, with 36.5% and 23.8% growth, respectively.

For the full year, the total disk storage systems market posted 10.7% growth to $23.7 billion. In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, HP lead the market with 23.1% followed by IBM with 20.3% revenue share respectively. EMC maintained the third position with 14.2% revenue share. Dell and IBM posted the largest year-over-year revenue growth among the top 5 vendors during the quarter, with 29.9% and 12.0% growth respectively.

Tables, see: Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker

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