New York, Sept 06: Global sales of data storage systems revenue fell 3.9 per cent in the second quarter, hurt by weakness in Asia, according to a study published on Friday. Worldwide disk storage systems factory revenues were $4.73 billion in the second quarter of 2003, down from $4.92 billion last year, according to research firm IDC.
"This is the second quarter of growth in North America, an indication of a turnaround in that region," said John McArthur, a group vice president at IDC. "At the same time, we saw significant declines in Asia, particularly in Japan.
He added that the mixed results provided no indication of a near-term, global recovery in the disk storage systems market. While demand for data storage has risen as companies increased their use of software databases and networks to store and route information, tight budgets and soft hard disk drive prices have hurt storage vendors.
Hewlett-Packard Co. continued to lead the market, with a 26.7 per cent revenue share, although International Business Machines Corp. and EMC Corp. both improved their positions.
IBM's second quarter market share rose 2.5 percentage points to 20.2 per cent, while EMC's stake climbed to 12.7 per cent, up 1.5 per cent, IDC said. Sun Microsystems Inc. was ranked No. 4 and Dell Inc. was fifth. Bureau Report