Worldwide Personal & Entry Level Storage Market Appreciated in 2013

Worldwide personal and entry-level storage (PELS) shipments grew 13.6% year over year in 2013, finishing the year with 75.2 million units, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Personal and Entry Level Storage Tracker.

Annual shipment values were up year over year, growing 6.2% to $6.7 billion. Unit shipments were down slightly in the fourth quarter (4Q13), declining -4.2% year over year to 20.4 million units while 4Q13 shipment values were also down year over year, declining -10.3% to $1.8 billion.

"The personal and entry-level storage market finished 2013 strong even with the difficult comparison with a strong second half from a year ago," said Liz Conner, research manager, Storage Systems. "In 2012, the fourth quarter showed exceptionally strong growth as the PELS market was in full recovery mode after the Thailand floods, which led to hard disk drive (HDD) shortages. Despite the resulting slight decline in 4Q13, the PELS market was able post year-over-year growth for all of 2013.

This continued annual growth is driven by on-going consumer education, better marketing by vendors, and progressing product evolution to address items such as higher capacity, faster transfer speeds, and mobile device integration."

HDD vendors continue to increase share in PELS units shipped, gaining 6.6 points year over year to grow to 76.9% market share.

However the entry-level storage market continues to be dominated by the mainstream non-HDD vendors with 60.6% unit shipment market share, down 11.9 points year over year.

The entry-level storage market experienced a growth in unit shipments, gaining 6.8% year over year, based primarily on the 4-bay market, which acts as an easy entry point for vendors to introduce an entry level product.

The entry-level market saw unit shipments for the higher bay devices (6, 8, and 12 bays) remain flat with 0.7% year-over-year growth.

In 4Q13 the personal storage market saw continued decline in growth for dual-bay products, where unit shipments were down -32.2% year over year. Single-bay personal storage devices remain the most popular choice, representing 98.0% of the personal storage units shipped in 4Q13.