IDC reports 18 per cent drop in value of storage sales

Information growth is driving storage shipments

Firms are buying increased amounts of storage, but the price being paid for that storage has dropped sharply, according to figures released today by market intelligence firm IDC.

IDC reported the total value of disk sales dropped 18.2 per cent over the past year to $5.6bn, mirroring the recently reported decline in server sales. But at the same time the total disk capacity shipped reached 2,146 petabytes – an increase of 14.8 per cent.

"The overall storage capacity shipped continued to grow. These contrasting results are due to a combination of currency implications, lower overall sales, shifts in product mix, and aggressive pricing actions," said IDC enterprise storage research manager Steve Scully.

Recent figures from IDC showed the amount of digital information growing 73 per cent in 2008 to an estimated 487,000 petabytes.

IDC's storage systems research analyst, Liz Conner, said that high-end price band storage systems "saw a 14.5 per cent year-over-year growth as vendors discounted their very high-end products, shifting authorised storage vendors into lower price bands in order to meet the demand for high-end storage while accounting for reduced IT budgets."