External disk storage mkt on a high growth path

LONDON, UK: The European, Middle Eastern, and African (EMEA) external disk storage systems market experienced exceptionally high revenue growth rates during the second quarter of 2008.

The region's external disk storage systems market increased 20.3 percnt over 2Q07 to $1.77 billion. This makes 2Q08 the largest revenue-generating 2Q that the EMEA market has ever experienced.

This growth, however, was partly driven by a sharp decline in the value of the dollar during the quarter. The market increased by a more historically aligned 3.7 percent when measured in euros. New external disk storage systems capacity shipments exceeded 374 petabytes, which was a 55 ercent increase over 2Q07.

Eric Sheppard, IDC European disk storage systems program manager, said: "Even after taking exchange rates into consideration, EMEA's storage market appears to be bucking an overall economic slowdown. This can be partly attributed to increased spending on networked storage by midsize companies, as well as spending on DR and storage consolidation projects within larger enterprises. This growth is also driven by a protracted move of disk systems into new uses, such as backup and archive."

Western Europe Supplier Shares

The Western European portion of EMEA's external disk storage systems market increased 6 percent over the previous year to €888 million. EMC was the largest supplier in Western Europe, with €165 million.

This was up 3 percent over the company's €159 million during 2Q07. HP, IBM, NetApp, and Dell were all among the top five suppliers, with respective revenues of €146 million, €120 million, €83 million, and €75 million.

Sun Microsystems partly benefited from an increasingly closer relationship with Hitachi. In total, Sun's €73 million in revenue represented a 25 percent increase over the previous year. Hitachi's branded revenue (i.e., excluding sales through Sun) was up 9 percent over the previous year to €36 million.

Hitachi's branded and non-branded sales (i.e., including sales through Sun) were up 18 percent year over year when measured in euros. Fujitsu Siemens Computers' branded storage sales were down 18 percent over the previous year to €26 million. The company's branded and non-branded disk systems sales (i.e., including sales of EMC and NetApp branded arrays) were up 17 percent when measured in euros.

Central/Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMA)

The CEMA external disk storage market increased 11 percent year-on-year in dollar revenue terms, but showed a -4.3 percent year-on-year decline in euro-based terms in 2Q08, to reach €244.84 million.

The result was a strong 47.3 percent capacity increase year on year as overall ASP/GB declined significantly by -24.6 percent in the same period, making storage capacity a lot cheaper for end users. EMC remained the largest supplier in CEMA, generating €83.48 million, a 1.4 percent increase over the corresponding quarter of the previous year. HP, IBM, NetApp, and Sun Microsystems were all among the top five suppliers, with revenues of €45.14 million, €44.94 million, €20.98 million, and €15.58 million respectively.

NetApp was the fastest-growing supplier in the CEMA region, with a year-on-year growth rate of 47.5 percent, thanks in part to strong sales in the Africa region. Large and very large businesses continued to be major customers for storage systems, but SMEs increased their storage expenditure, making the midrange and volume storage segments the fastest expanding (2.1 percent year-on-year).

Philip Korinek, disk storage systems program manager, IDC CEMA , said: "Both large businesses and SMEs continue to invest in storage products, regarding the efficient management of business data required to maintain efficiency, remain competitive, and meet increasingly rigorous legal requirements."

Source: IDC