For the first time in five years, storage sales have fallen year-over-year, reports IDC in its Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker. Sales of external disk storage systems declined 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, while total disk storage system sales dropped 5.9 percent, reported ChannelWeb's Joseph F. Kovar.

The storage hardware market is broken down into two broad categories in the IDC report:

• the external disk storage system segment which includes only storage systems sold independently of a server and
• the total disk storage systems segment which includes disk storage sold as part of a server.

According to IDC, total worldwide external disk storage systems revenue was $5.3 billion in the fourth quarter, down 0.5 percent compared to the $5.4 billion sold in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Of the top seven vendors, EMC, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell, and Hitachi all saw growth over last year of between 3.4 percent and 10.0 percent, while IBM, NetApp, and Sun saw declines of between 5.4 percent and 11.3 percent, IDC said.

Leading sales was EMC with $1.24 billion, up 3.4 percent from the $1.20 billion it sold last year, while IBM retained its second place status despite an 11.3 percent drop in sales to $838 million. HP followed with sales of $691 million, then Dell with $493 million, Hitachi with $413 million, NetApp with $374 million and Sun with $275 million.

Total storage sales in the fourth quarter dropped for vendors as follows:

• HP 1.5 percent
• IBM 22.7 percent
• Dell 3.2 percent
• Sun 1.5 percent

Hitachi, considered a relatively minor player in the storage market compared to the other four, did show a total storage sales rise of 4.2 percent during this period.

Overall, HP led the total disk storage systems market with sales of $1.4 billion during the fourth quarter, followed by IBM with sales of $1.3 billion, then EMC with sales of $1.2 billion, Dell with $795 million, Hitachi with $424 million, Sun with $419 million, and NetApp with $374 million.

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Storage Hardware Sales Drop: Report [...read more...]

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