Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 2.3%, totaling just over $6.7 billion, in the fourth quarter of 2012 (4Q12), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker. For the quarter, the total (internal plus external) disk storage systems market generated $8.6 billion in revenue, representing 0.7% growth from the prior year's fourth quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped in 4Q12 reached 8 exabytes, growing 25.3% year over year. The external disk storage systems market generated $24.7 billion in sales during the full year, which represented a 4.7% increase over 2011. Total external disk storage systems capacity shipped during the year surpassed 20 exabytes, which represents an increase of 27% over 2011.

"Although the rate of growth decelerated during the quarter, the external disk storage system market finished the year with solid fourth quarter results and even posted a record-breaking $24.7 billion in full year factory revenue," said Eric Sheppard, Research Director, Storage. "FICON attached array sales and network attached storage (NAS) both helped drive the factory revenue increase during the quarter as companies invested in storage required to support mainframe environments and to deal with the continued growth in unstructured data."

4Q12 External Disk Storage Systems Results

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 30.7% revenue share in the fourth quarter, followed by IBM and NetApp with 15.0% and 11.6% market share, respectively. HP and Hitachi ended the quarter in a statistical tie* for the number four position with market shares of 9.3% and 8.8%, respectively.

Open Networked Disk Storage Systems Highlights

The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 2.6% year over year in the fourth quarter to just over $5.7 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 34.2% revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 13.7% revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which grew just 0.3% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 28.7% revenue share, followed by IBM in second with 18.0% market share and HP and Hitachi tied* for third with 11.9% and 11.4% shares, respectively. The NAS market increased 8.8% year over year, led by EMC with 48.2% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 28.3% share.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Q4 2012 (Revenues are in millions)

4Q12 Total Disk Storage Systems Market Results

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, EMC finished in the top position with 24.0% market share based on revenues followed by IBM and HP in a statistical tie for second with market shares of 16.2% and 16.0% respectively.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Total Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Q4 2012 (Revenues are in Millions)

In addition to the table above, a graphic illustrating the year-over-year change in market share for the top 6 vendors in the total disk storage systems market is available at IDC.com. Instructions on how to embed this graphic into online news articles and social media can be found by viewing this press release on IDC.com.

Taxonomy Notes:

IDC defines a Disk Storage System as a set of storage elements, including controllers, cables, and (in some instances) host bus adapters, associated with three or more disks. A system may be located outside of or within a server cabinet and the average cost of the disk storage systems does not include infrastructure storage hardware (i.e. switches) and non-bundled storage software.

The information in this quantitative study is based on a branded view of the disk storage systems sale. Revenue associated with the products to the end user is attributed to the seller (brand) of the product, not the manufacturer. Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) sales are not included in this study. In this study, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) sales do not reflect their OEM sales to Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the global disk storage market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly shipments and revenues (both customer and factory), Terabytes, $/Gigabyte, Gigabyte/Unit, and Average Selling Value. Each criteria can be segmented by location, installation base, operating system, vendor, family, model, and region.

For more information about IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, please contact Lidice Fernandez at 305-351-3051 or lfernandez@idc.com.

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