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Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 6.5%, totaling just under $6.0 billion, in the second quarter of 2012 (2Q12), according to an IDC report.

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market posted just under $8.1 billion in revenues, representing 8.0% growth from the prior year's second quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 6,667 petabytes, growing 24.8% year over year.

"The external disk storage system market continues to grow on a stable trajectory with factory revenues approaching $6 billion for the first time in the second quarter," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "Despite concerns regarding the global and regional economies, end users continue to invest in storage infrastructures. Helping to drive the worldwide market in Q2 was the double-digit growth in the emerging regions and strong demand for mid-range storage."

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 30.4% revenue share in the second quarter, followed by IBM and NetApp in a statistical tie for second with 12.9% and 12.1% market share, respectively. HP captured the number four position with 10.7% share. Hitachi and Dell rounded out the top 5 in statistical tie for fifth with 8.1% and 7.8% market shares, respectively.

The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 6.5% year over year in the second quarter to just under $5.2 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 33.7% revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 14.0% revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which grew 8.0% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 29.4% revenue share, followed by IBM in second and HP in third with 15.2% and 12.8% shares, respectively.

The NAS market increased 2.5% year over year, led by EMC with 45.7% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 32.0% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show good growth, posting 5.9% revenue growth compared to the prior year's quarter. Dell led the market with 28.3% revenue share, followed by EMC in second with 20.4% market share. HP and NetApp finished the quarter in a statistical tie for third with 12.6% and 12.1% market shares, respectively.

"The mid-range storage class (ASP $25k-$249.99k) grew faster than any other class at 12.2% year-over-year growth in the second quarter," said Amita Potnis, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "At 48.2% share of total worldwide external revenue in 2Q12, IDC expects that the mid-range storage class will soon cross the 50% revenue share milestone. IDC believes that this class will be the fastest growing class as vendors bring to market modular systems offering enterprise-level functionality such as compression, tiering, and data de-duplication at greater affordability."