EMC was knocked out of first place in key market revenue areas,
including network-attached storage (NAS) and open-storage area
networks (SAN), a report from market research firm IDC shows.
In a marketplace marked by declining sales, Network Appliance took
the lead from EMC this past quarter in the NAS area, with 38%
revenue share compared with EMC's 31%. EMC had previously led the
market for several quarters. In the open SAN market,
Hewlett-Packard nudged EMC out of the top spot, taking 30% revenue
share, compared with EMC's 27%.
Overall, EMC's worldwide disk sales fell 21% quarter-to-quarter,
according to the report. Hitachi and IBM saw significant overall
disk storage growth this past quarter, up 23% and 7%, respectively.
EMC did hold on to its lead in overall network storage market sales
(NAS combined with open SAN), with 28% revenue share, according to
IDC. HP maintained its market share lead in terms of total storage
revenue, with 27% market share, followed by IBM with 20%.
Worldwide disk storage systems factory revenue was down 3% this
past quarter, to $4.7bn. The NAS market fell 10%, and the open SAN
market dropped 6% overall.
"The declining revenue picture can sometimes be misleading," said
John McCarthy, vice-president of storage research at IDC. "The
trend towards networked storage continues, which means that
suppliers have to look beyond revenue to see that capacity growth
of networked storage exceeds the growth of direct-attached
storage."