Western Digital, Iomega and Hewlett Packard Make Major Moves in Consumer Network Storage Market Share

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — As growth slows in the global consumer network storage market, competitors are jockeying for market share, reports In-Stat. Western Digital, Iomega and Hewlett-Packard (HP) each made major upward moves in 2008 capturing share. Meanwhile, market leader Buffalo Technologies, continues to hold the top spot in the market.

“In general, other than Buffalo, networking-centric companies did not fare as well in 2008 as traditional storage companies.” says Joyce Putscher, In-Stat analyst. “Meanwhile growth is shifting towards higher capacity models, as some vendors migrate the lower end of their product lines from 500GB to 1TB and higher capacity devices.”

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

• The worldwide consumer network storage market grew by 24% in 2008. Although 500GB products will have some staying power, from 2008 to 2013 we expect to see the highest growth coming from the 1.5TB+ segment.
• Among North American consumer survey respondents, nearly one half of network storage owners used the drives to play digital music, and over a quarter use the drives to play digital video.
• The EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) market is expected to outshine all other regions in growth from 2008 to 2013.

Recent In-Stat research, Global Consumer Network Storage: Say Goodbye 500GB, Hello 2TB (#IN0904515RC), covers the worldwide market. Consumer network storage includes NAS, SAN, NDAS, and Windows Home Server platforms.