The first quarter of
2004 was the 3rd quarter of consecutive growth in the storage market following
the 3 year US IT recession, and this was reflected in the business results
reported by the Fastest
Growing Storage Companies in 2004. But not all segments would recover.
Technological innovation meant that many storage segments which had been hot
prospects before the recession, were being pushed aside in favor of faster
cheaper alternatives.
The Most Popular Subjects in Q104
There are over 60
storage categories on STORAGEsearch. The top 5 most popular, based on pageviews
in the first quarter of 2004 were as follows. Figures in (brackets) indicate
rank a year earlier (in Q103).
- Solid state disks (3)
- NAS (4)
- Backup software (2)
- Serial ATA (1)
- USB storage (6)
The
decline in pageviews for SATA from its #1 position throughout most of 2003, at
first looks surprising. But by this time, in Q104, SATA products had been
shipping for several quarters and SATA had become a mainstream technology which
was starting to get coverage in the general PC press.
We'd reported on
the high emerging interest in solid state disks the year before, and later, in
Q204, announced that we would be doing more
market research into
this segment to learn what users really wanted. |
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Pick of the News Stories in Q104 |
| January 2004
- Toshiba showed their new 0.85-inch hard disk drive at CES. This was the
first HDD with multi-gigabyte capacity in a sub-one-inch form factor. |
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LaCie launched the fastest dual format DVD±RW Drivewith write
speeds of 8x and rewrite speeds at 4x.
SanDisk launched their Cruzer
Titanium (picture on the right) a sleek, stylish and mechanically virtually
indestructible, portable USB flash storage drive. |
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| STORAGE search news
archive - 2004, January week 1,
week 2,
week 3,
week 4 | |
|
February 2004
- Growing confidence in the memory market led Infineon Technologies to expand
its Memory Development Center at Dresden. Infineon said it planned to invest
120 million Euros (about $150 million) during the next two years.
SimpleTech
announced the industry's highest capacity CompactFlash with an 8 GB Type II
card using the Company's patented stacking technology.
Hitachi GST
announced the Ultrastar 10K300, the world's first 300GB enterprise hard disk
drive. Spinning at 10,000 RPM the new drives were being evaluated by major
OEMs. |
LAKS launched its MP3 Watch
and Voice Recorder at CeBIT (picture on the right) with memory capacity upto
256 MB.
It included an integrated voice recorder. The USB socket built
into the wrist strap made it possible to transfer data easily to any PC. |
 |
| STORAGE search news
archive - 2004, February week 1,
week 2,
week 3,
week 4 | |
|
|
March 2004 - Spectra Logic achieved a milestone mark
as the company has sold its 10,000th Spectra 2K tape library (which was first
introduced in October 1997).
LSI Logic announced today that the
company will deliver a 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA product family supporting the
FCIA's vote to extend 4Gb/s Fibre Channel from a drive interconnect to HBAs and
switched SAN fabrics.
CATC and Dashcourses said the two companies
will deliver open enrollment, hands-on training on InfiniBand, iSCSI, PCI
Express, SAS, SATA, SCSI, and USB. STORAGEsearch had speculated a few years
earlier that lack of training in new emerging storage interface technologies
could be slowing down their adoption.
M-Systems released a new
solid-state flash disk with Ultra ATA interface in a 2.5" disk casing up to
90GBytes. This was the highest density 2.5" solid state disk.
Broadcom
announced the availability of a new network storage processor chip enabling a
new class of low-cost and easy to use NAS devices for the home and small- to
medium sized business markets. Entry-level products based on the BCM4780 chip
could retail for as little as $99 (without drives), and require no CD
installation process.
STORAGE search news
archive - 2004, March week 1,
week 2,
week 3,
week 4
|
|
Pick of the
Storage Market Research
Reports in Q104 |
The
Bus Rolls on for USB - Says In-Stat/MDR
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.
- March 8, 2004 - The USB saw continued success in 2003, according to In-Stat/MDR.
With
continued adoption of USB in the consumer electronics and communications
segments, and the rapid introduction of high-speed USB into PCs and PC
peripherals, the total market for USB-enabled devices will experience 18.3%
annual growth between 2003 and 2008.
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"By all
accounts the USB standard has been a huge success," says Brian O'Rourke, a
Senior Analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "And USB will see continued success in a
variety of applications." The transition from full-speed to high-speed USB
is progressing rapidly. "The killer application for high-speed USB is the
fact that it is backwards compatible with the hundreds of millions of low-speed
and full-speed USB devices already on the market."
In-Stat/MDR has
also found that: High speed USB was in about 4 out of 5 PCs shipped in 2003, and
will be in nearly all PCs shipping in 2004.
In the PC peripheral market, high speed USB is in an increasing
number of devices, particularly external drives, scanners and printers. The
fastest growing market for USB in this segment is USB Flash Drives.
In consumer electronics, applications such as digital still cameras,
digital camcorders and set top boxes are seeing increased penetration of USB,
particularly high speed USB. |
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The
report, USB 2004: The Bus Rolls On (#IN0401154MI), contains five-year forecasts
for Low/Full Speed USB, High Speed USB, and USB OTG. Penetration of each type of
USB into 35 separate applications is provided. Responses on USB from
In-Stat/MDR's annual Residential Technology Survey are included in the report.
Brief profiles of major USB silicon and IP suppliers are also provided.
To purchase this report, or for more information, please contact Erin
McKeighan at 480-609-4551; emckeighan@reedbusiness.com. The report price is
$3,495.
...In-Stat profile | |
IDC
Reports on External Disk Storage Systems Market
FRAMINGHAM,
Mass - March 5, 2004 -Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues
grew 8.4% year-over-year to $3.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2003 according
to IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker.
"The U.S. was the first to feel the downturn and is now leading
in the recovery with a healthy 7% growth rate," said John McArthur, group
vice president of Storage research at IDC. "Outside the U.S., much of the
perceived growth is the result of a weakened dollar. However, we are at least
seeing signs of stabilization, which is an improvement over past quarters."
The total network storage market (NAS Combined with Open and iSCSI
SAN) posted 23.5% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter to more than $2.1
billion, largely due to growth in the Open SAN market. EMC continues to maintain
its leadership in the total network storage market with 28.1% revenue share,
followed by HP and IBM with 26.0% and 14.4% revenue share, respectively.
In the Open SAN market, which grew 26.4% compared to the same quarter a year
ago, HP led with 30.9% revenue share followed by EMC with 25.8% share. In the
NAS market, EMC retook the lead with 37.8% revenue share, followed by Network
Appliance with 33.3% share. Still in the early market stage, the iSCSI SAN
market posted 74% sequential revenue growth with Network Appliance leading
the market with 49.0% share, followed by EMC with 33.2% share.
In the total disk storage systems market, IBM moved into a virtual tie
with HP for the number 1 position, aided by its traditionally strong fourth
quarter sales. HP and IBM had 25.6% and 25.4% share, respectively. EMC
maintained the third position with 13.3% revenue share, followed by Dell with
6.5% share. Rounding out the top 5, Hitachi and Sun Microsystems again tied for
fifth position. For the full year, the total disk storage systems market posted
1% growth to $19.8 billion.
...IDC profile | |
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Venture funds in STORAGE
on
STORAGEsearch.com |
Storage
companies which received big investments in the first quarter of 2004 include
the following.
- March
8, 2004 - Voltaire today announced that it has secured $15 million
in financing bringing the company's total funding to date to $50 million.
"The InfiniBand market has advanced significantly over the past
year with support from leading vendors such as IBM, Oracle, SUN, HP, SGI and
Apple, and, more importantly, from customers in the high performance computing
and enterprise data center markets," said Ashley Leeds, partner, Baker
Capital.
...Voltaire profile
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