Disk storage market on the road to recovery

Market decline slows after two quarters of double-digit contraction.

The disk storage market started to find its feet again in Q3 2009, despite a 7.3 percent annual drop in sales, research has claimed.

Analyst Gartner claims that last quarter's decline represents something of a recovery after the double-digit drops seen in the first half of the year. Total third quarter global revenues for external controller-based disk storage kit were US$3.97bn, down from US$4.28bn in the corresponding period last year.

EMC bolstered its position as the world's leading vendor, snaffling 26.7 percent of the market. IBM took second spot, with a 13.2 percent slice. Both firms suffered comparatively modest sales drops of about five percent apiece.

HP was in third spot with 10.8 percent of the market, two points ahead of Hitachi in fourth. HP saw sales fall 14.3 percent, while Hitachi endured a 16.5 percent drop-off as both firms lost market share.

Dell took fifth spot in Q3, a hair's breadth ahead of NetApp, as both firms grabbed about 8.6 percent of the market. Sun Microsystems was a distant seventh, holding 3.6 percent of the market.

Gartner's principal research analyst for its global storage quarterly statistics programme Donna Taylor, said: "The year-on-year decline of 7.3 percent indicates that the economic downturn’s impact on the disk array storage market is loosening its grip.

"The prior two quarters showed declines in the double digits, so this is good news for storage vendors, because it is the first sign of a light at the end of the tunnel."