Data storage sales starting to rebound - IDC

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Sales of computer data-storage equipment slid 10 percent in the third quarter, but industry tracker IDC said signs of a turnaround are emerging.

Global external disk storage revenue dropped to $4.4 billion in the July-September period, IDC said. Market leaders EMC Corp and International Business Machines Corp both increased their market share.

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IDC analyst Steve Scully said signs of stability that began to appear in the enterprise storage market in the second quarter were more widespread in the third quarter. The market fell 18.3 percent in the April-June period.

"Clearly we're starting to see the pent-up demand in storage being fulfilled," Scully said. "It's encouraging to see sequential growth that's broad-based among the vendors."

IDC said entry-level, midrange and high-end storage segments showed quarter-over-quarter gains for the first time since the final quarter of 2008.

EMC grew its leading market share to 24.2 percent despite a 6.8 percent drop in revenue to $1.06 billion. Scully said EMC's $2.4 billion acquisition of Data Domain over the summer helped boost its storage sales when compared with a year ago.

IBM's revenue fell 6.5 percent, but the company raised its market share to 13.2 percent, good for second place.

Third-place Hewlett-Packard Co posted the steepest decline among the top five vendors, with external storage sales falling 15 percent. Its share fell to 11.8 percent.

Dell sales fell 8.8 percent as it remained No. 4, while No. 5 NetApp Inc gained share as sales slipped a mere 3.7 percent.