Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) held on to its lead in the disk storage systems market in the second quarter, but saw a decline in revenue and market share, according to a survey by market researcher IDC published Friday.
HP led the rankings for total worldwide disk storage systems factory revenue in the second quarter, but saw its revenue in this market decline 8.9 percent to $1.15 billion, from $1.26 billion in the year-earlier quarter, and its market share slip to 23 percent from 26.5 percent a year earlier.
IDC estimated the market for disk storage systems grew by 5 percent overall, to $5 billion, from $4.77 billion a year earlier. It defines the systems as an assembly of controllers, cables and host bus adapters associated with three or more disks, located either within a server or outside it.
IBM Corp. held on to second place, with disk storage system revenue growing 6.2 percent year on year to $1.02 billion, compared to $957 million a year earlier, and market share inching up to 20.3 percent from 20.1 percent a year earlier.
EMC Corp. made the biggest year-on-year gain in market share, moving from 12.6 percent to 14.4 percent, according to IDC, but remained in third place with its disk storage system revenue for the quarter up 19.5 percent to $719 million from $602 million a year earlier.
Sun Microsystems Inc.'s revenue and market share declined, but with disk storage system revenue of $379 million it remained just ahead of Dell Inc., which notched up the biggest year-on-year revenue growth rate in the survey, 21.7 percent, taking its disk storage system revenue to $365 million from the year-earlier figure of $300 million.
IDC broke out figures for the market for external disk storage systems, where EMC topped the table with market share of 20.7 percent and revenue of $719 million. HP came second, although its market share slipped to 18.2 percent from 21.4 percent a year earlier, and its revenue from this sector slipped 8.3 percent to $631 million. IBM stayed in third place with revenue of $471 million, up 4.7 percent year on year. Sun and Hitachi Data Systems Corp. almost tied for fourth place in this sector, with revenue of $282 million, down 2 percent, and $281 million, up 4.7 percent, respectively. Other vendors accounted for the remaining 31.4 percent of this market, which IDC estimates is worth $3.48 billion, up 8 percent on the year-earlier quarter.
IDC counts revenue based on the brand under which systems are sold, not the manufacturer, so for example Hitachi's sales do not reflect the equipment bought by Sun and HP for resale under their own brands.