While disk storage system vendors feel the negative impact and total revenues declined year over year, the overall storage capacity shipped continued to grow due to currency implications, lower overall sales, shifts in product mix and aggressive pricing actions.
IDC defines a disk storage system as a set of storage elements associated with three or more disks and located outside of or within a server cabinet. In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, HP led with 17.4 percent followed by EMC with 15.5 percent market share.
“We'll most likely see a similar situation in the second quarter of this year (capacity shipments growing in terms of TBs while revenue remains soft) based on the same factors of currency, customers buying the amount of storage they need (smaller systems) and aggressive pricing by vendors,” according to IDC Research Manager Steven Scully. “The second half of the year still depends on the overall economy but any revenue growth that does come will be slow through 2009."
Valerie Valentine is senior editor for Information Management. You can follow her on Twitter at @va1va1entine or via email at valerie.valentine@sourcemedia.com.
