External Disk Storage Sales Plunge 7%

The poor economy is causing the external disk storage systems market to drop, with IDC expecting a 6.7 percent year-over-year decrease in 2009. The good news is that the market is expected to increase 1.5 percent year-over-year from 2009 to 2010.

End-user worldwide sales are expected to decrease 3.1 percent in 2009 over 2008, and overall disk storage capacity is expected to grow at less than 35 percent. External disk storage systems capacity is expected to grow 44 percent in 2009, which is a shift from traditional 50 to 60 percent annual growth that was seen in previous years.

IDC described 2009 as appearing to be very weak, but the demand for external disk storage systems over the next five years will remain healthy because of the vast growth of digital information. The five-year compound annual growth rate from 2008 to 2013 is expected to be 1.9 percent, reflecting the market’s recovery. This assumes the annual cost per gigabyte declines by about 30 percent over the same time period, IDC noted.

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