Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

EXT. DISK STORAGE MARKET POSTS LARGEST GROWTH IN TWO YEARS

Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew 8.4 percent year-over-year to $3.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2003 (4Q03), posting the largest quarterly gain since the economic downturn began, according to IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker. For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew at a slightly slower rate of 6.1 percent year-over-year, as external storage grew faster than internal storage. Although favorable exchange rates were a leading factor in the strong result, demand for disk storage systems picked up in the fourth quarter, resulting in 52 percent year-over-year growth in external disk storage systems petabytes.

"The U.S. was the first to feel the downturn and is now leading in the recovery with a healthy 7 percent growth rate," said John McArthur, group vice president of Storage research at IDC. "Outside the U.S., much of the perceived growth is the result of a weakened dollar. However, we are at least seeing signs of stabilization, which is an improvement over past quarters."

Total External Disk Storage Systems

HP maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.7 percent revenue share, followed by EMC and IBM with 20.0 percent and 16.8 percent revenue share, respectively. Hitachi and Dell rounded out the top five with 7.4 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively. Among the top five suppliers, Dell and EMC posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during 4Q03, with 50 percent and 20.5 percent growth, respectively. The external disk storage systems market continues to consolidate as the top vendors now represent 82.4 percent of the market, up 5.4 points from the fourth quarter of 2002. External RAID accounted for more than 91 percent of the external market, growing 11.4 percent year-over-year. EMC led the external RAID market with 21.9 percent revenue share, followed closely by HP with 20.8 percent share.

Network Disk Storage Systems

The total network storage market (NAS Combined with Open and iSCSI SAN) posted 23.5 percent year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter to more than $2.1 billion, largely due to growth in the Open SAN market. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 28.1 percent revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 26 percent and 14.4 percent revenue share, respectively. IBM and HP each gained more than 2 points of revenue share from the previous year's quarter, the largest gains among the top vendors.

In the Open SAN market, which grew 26.4 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago, HP led with 30.9 percent revenue share followed by EMC with 25.8 percent share. In the NAS market, EMC retook the lead with 37.8 percent revenue share, followed by Network Appliance with 33.3 percent share. Still in the early market stage, the iSCSI SAN market posted 74 percent sequential revenue growth with Network Appliance leading the market with 49 percent share, followed by EMC with 33.2 percent share.

Total Disk Storage Systems Market -- Internal Plus External

In the total disk storage systems market, IBM moved into a virtual tie with HP for the number 1 position, aided by its traditionally strong fourth quarter sales. HP and IBM had 25.6 percent and 25.4 percent share, respectively. EMC maintained the third position with 13.3 percent revenue share, followed by Dell with 6.5 percent share. Rounding out the top 5, Hitachi and Sun Microsystems again tied for fifth position.

For the full year, the total disk storage systems market posted 1 percent growth to $19.8 billion. HP maintained its leadership with 26.3 percent revenue share, followed by IBM and EMC with 21.6 percent and 12.7 percent revenue share, respectively. IBM and Dell were the only two vendors among the top five that posted double digit annual revenue growth.