The worldwide demand for external storage disk systems improved in the fourth quarter of 2013 after protracted decline, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.
The total revenue generated by external storage disk systems producers increased from $6,746 million in the fourth quarter of 2012 to $6,909 million in the fourth quarter of 2013, representing 2.4 percent increase.
EMC had the largest share of the market for external storage disk systems in the fourth quarter of 2013 with a total of $2,276 million revenue as against $2,071 million in the fourth quarter of 2012, representing 32.9 percent of the total market share. Over the same period, IBM raked in $901 in revenue, representing 13 percent of the market.
NetApp, HP and Hitachi made $791 million, $667 million and $558 million, representing 11.5, 9.6 and 8.1 percents respectively. Other producers together raked in $1,716 million in the same period.
Eric Sheppard, Research Director, IDC Storage says “The disk storage systems market was able to break free of recent headwinds due to traditional year-end budget flushes, improved economic sentiment, and a strong desire to address long-standing storage infrastructure inefficiencies. Industry stakeholders able to capitalize the most on this demand were often those with recent product refreshes and strong go-to-market initiatives targeted at integrated infrastructure and storage optimization.”