Growth in External Disk Market Speeds Up

September 8, 2008: The external disk storage market is still going gangbusters according to IDC, with its worldwide storage tracker noting the highest year-on-year growth for two years.

The analyst firm says that external disk storage systems factory revenues have grown 16.7 percent year-over-year, totalling US$5.1 (AU$6.3) billion in the second quarter of 2008 (2Q08).

The quarterly tracker found that the total disk storage systems market grew to US$6.9 (AU$8.5) billion in revenues, a jump of 10.9 percent on Q2 last year, with the total capacity shipped reaching 1,777 petabytes – a 43.7 percent growth year over year.

“Despite concerns about a 2008 slowdown in IT spending, external disk storage systems spending experienced strong growth in the first half of 2008,” said Natalya Yezhkova, research manager, Storage Systems at IDC. “The second quarter of the year was remarkable, not only because it is the highest growth in two years, but also because of the distribution of this growth across different market segments.”

Yezhkowa adds that the wide array of storage products vendors are currently offering is leading the growth across all environments, even those that have declined over the past several quarters.

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