Cloud bites deep into entry-level and personal storage market
Cloud storage is biting deep into personal and entry-level storage shipments, which were down 13.4% year on year in Q3.
IDC says the market saw 16.7 million units shipped worldwide. While that's a 13.4% year on year decline, it is up 10.3% on the previous quarter, the analyst firm says.
Shipment values fared even worse, down 19.8% year on year to $1.3 billion.
IDC defines the personal and entry level storage market as storage products and solutions with a single bay through to 12 bay configurations manufactured and marketed for individuals, small offices/home offices and small businesses.
Jingwen Li, IDC senior research analyst for storage systems, says the market was stagnant in 2014 and started to show signs of decline in 2015.
"The adoption of cloud storage has been gaining traction in the consumer space with its easy data access and mobile device integration," Li says.
Li notes one of the negative impacts of cloud storage deployment is the shrinking demand within the personal and entry level storage market (PELS).
Personal storage remained the dominant component of the PELS market, accounting for more than 98% of shipments. However, Q3 marked the fourth consecutive quarter of declining shipments for personal storage, which was down 13.5% year on year.
IDC says the majority of personal storage shipments were products with 1TB and 2TB capacity. Combined, these two capacities accounted for nearly 75% of units shipped.
Entry level storage, which represents the PELS market segment with higher margins, also started to show shipment declines, down 4.5% during the quarter. IDC says 4TB and 8TB to 20TB devices accounted for the majority of shipments as SMBs demanded larger capacity to meet their storage needs.
On the interface front, USB remained the most popular choice. Dual interface products continued to grow at double-digit rates – 51.8% year on year.
Ethernet offerings experienced the largest decline in the recent four quarters, down 17.6% year on year, due largely to the decline in the entry-level space.
