IDC: Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory Q1 Revenues Fell 5.2%

(RTTNews) - Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues fell 5.2 percent year over year to $5.6 billion during the first quarter of 2014, according to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market generated $7.3 billion in revenue, representing a decrease of 6.9 percent from the prior year's first quarter and a sequential decline of 17 percent compared to the seasonally stronger fourth quarter of 2013. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped was 9.9 exabytes, growing 19.9 percent from last year.

"The poor results of the first quarter were driven by several factors, the most important of which was a -25% decline in high-end storage spending," said Eric Sheppard, Research Director, IDC Storage.

Other important contributors to the market decline include the mainstream adoption of storage optimization technologies, a trend towards keeping systems longer, economic uncertainty, and the ability of customers to address capacity needs on a micro and short-term basis through public cloud offerings.

EMC was the largest supplier, but experienced a year-over-year share loss during the quarter.

The company captured 29.1 percent of the external disk storage revenue during the quarter, down from 30.2 percent the year prior.

NetApp was the second largest supplier in the market with 15.1 percent share of external revenue, up from 14.8 percent in the first quarter.

HP, IBM, and Hitachi finished the quarter in a statistical tie for the third position with shares of 8.8 percent, 8.8 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively.