#1 Bigger Byte, Smaller Bite
Perhaps in no other IT product segment is the “do-more-with-less” approach more appropriate than in storage. The good news is that digital storage demands continue to soar and are expected to increase as much as 200 percent over the next couple of years. The bad news is that prices — and margins — remain under tremendous pressure.
For the third quarter disk market, Gartner put sales at $3.9 billion, down 7.3 percent year-over-year, and IDC assessed at $4.4 billion, down 10 percent. Both research companies reported that the results were less bad than most recent quarters, and actually an improvement over 2Q09. The picture wasn’t much brighter for storage software sales. IDC reported that 3Q09 sales declined 7.9 percent Y-o-Y to $2.87 billion, but rose 1.2 percent from 2Q09.