Gartner: External storage market growth slower than expected

The global external hard drive market totalled $5.5 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2012 – a 6.7 per cent year-on-year increase that fell short of the 7.9 per cent increase expected.

According to these latest figures from Gartner, although the sector has seen its 11th consecutive quarter of growth, demand was dampened by slow economic performance in the EMEA region, while vendor pricing was hurt by a return to normal supply levels following the shortages after the Thailand floods.

“Although the hard-disk drive supply issues created by the October 2011 Thailand flood was no longer an impediment on meeting user demand, the economy in certain regions had a debilitating impact on vendor revenue in the second quarter of 2012,” said Gartner’s research vice president, Roger Cox.

“In particular, the dour EMEA economy dampened year-over-year vendor revenue growth to just 2.6 percent against a forecast of 7.4 percent, while the slowing Asia/Pacific economy held year-over-year vendor revenue growth to 9 percent, 7.1 percentage points lower than Gartner’s forecast. Only the North American region and Japan met or exceeded our expectations in the second quarter of 2012.”