IDC: No-Name Storage Vendors Gain on Leaders in Q1

All five disk storage market leaders, including EMC (EMC), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Dell, NetApp (NTAP) and IBM (IBM) lost considerable revenue in Q1 2014 while the also-rans, taken as a group, gained nearly 7 percent year over year, according to new worldwide figures from researcher IDC.

The overall market, including internal and external storage, slid 6.9 percent to $7.3 billion from last year’s $7.8 billion.

IBM was the only vendor to slip a position in the share rankings, falling from fourth place to fifth on a year-over-year basis. Measuring by revenue, EMC remained the market leader with $1.6 billion in sales and a 22.4 percent share for the period, only a .5 percent slip from the same period last year, but its revenue slid nearly 9 percent year-over-year.

Similarly, HP rang up $1.1 billion in sales for a 15.1 percent share of the market, only a .2 percent slip in share, but an 8 percent slide in revenue produced. Dell pocketed third place with $871 million in sales for an 11.9 percent share, a 1.8 percent dip from last year, as sales tumbled 19 percent. NetApp climbed up to fourth place with $854 million in sales for a 11.7 percent stake as revenue dipped by 2.8 percent. IBM was the big year-over-year loser, as its revenue fell by 20.5 percent to $743 million for a 10.1 percent share of the market, down from the 11.9 percent it recorded last year.

The big winner in IDC’s figuring was clearly the “Others” category, which includes storage upstarts such as Nexenta, Nimble (NMBL), Nutanix and PureStorage, in horse racing terminology known as “the field.” That segment’s sales rose by 6.8 percent for the quarter to $2.1 billion, gaining 3.7 points in market share to dominate the market with a 28.8 percent stake.

What’s that mean for the traditional storage market leaders? It means customers are diversifying their choices in vendors, ramping up competition in the segment that’s likely to shift the balance of power even further.

"The poor results of the first quarter were driven by several factors, the most important of which was a -25% decline in high-end storage spending," said Eric Sheppard, IDC Storage research director. "Other important contributors to the market decline include the mainstream adoption of storage optimization technologies, a general trend toward keeping systems longer, economic uncertainty, and the ability of customers to address capacity needs on a micro and short-term basis through public cloud offerings."