ARMONK (dpa-AFX) - Market intelligence provider International Data Corp., or IDC, said Monday that worldwide storage software market revenue in the first quarter increased 12.4 percent from last year, driven partly by continued demand for recently refreshed products.
In its Worldwide Storage Software QView, IDC said, revenue in the quarter increased to $3.49 billion from $3.10 billion in the year-ago quarter. In the preceding fourth quarter, the storage software market reported revenues of $3.41 billion.
Eric Sheppard, research director with IDC's Storage Software program, said, 'The storage software market experienced another quarter of double-digit year-over-year growth, which was partly driven by continued demand for recently refreshed products as well as a general desire to improve the way corporate data is stored and protected.'
EMC Corp. (EMC), Symantec Corp. (SYMC) and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), in that order, were the top three vendors in terms of worldwide storage software revenue. EMC reported a 19.2 percent growth in revenue at $828.9 million. The company's market share grew to 23.8 percent from 22.4 percent.
Symantec's market share fell to 16 percent from 17 percent, despite a 5.8 percent growth in revenue to $559 million.
For IBM, the growth in revenue was 10.2 percent at $501.6 million. However, its market share slipped to 14.4 percent from 14.7 percent.
NetApp Inc. (NTAP) and Hitachi Ltd. (HIT) came in at fourth and fifth positions, respectively.
'New storage technologies that help drive improved asset utilization and operational expenses clearly appeal to many IT departments. This, coupled with a demand for data protection and business continuity, has helped to drive the growth in the storage software market,' Sheppard added.
IDC said that the storage infrastructure market experienced the highest year-over-year growth of 29.3 percent, with the functional market generating $333 million.
Data protection and recovery continued to be the largest functional market by a considerable margin, IDC said. Sales in this market segment surpassed $1.4 billion for the quarter, up 12.7 percent from last year.
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