Top 12 Storage Companies in 2013

Global revenue of Top 12 Storage Companies increased 5% from 2012 to 2013, compared to 10% from 2011 to 2012. The worldwide storage market took a pause in 2013 with decline in storage subsystems and software, confirmed IDC.

As we wrote previously, the real winners are not the storage giants but smaller companies and start-ups with more innovative hardware and software.

EMC continues to be #1 in storage. It’s the case since 2004 but with a small growth in 2013 (4%), like in 2012. Rival NetApp is also growing slightly, +2% in 2012 and in 2013, compared to 22% in 2011.

WD took the second position from Seagate but this ranking could eventually change in 2014 as Seagate is acquiring $814 million UK firm Xyratex.

In bad shape in storage, IBM, without Tivoli software business, is positioned as #7 in 2013 and was #5 in 2012.

WD records the highest percentage of growth last year with 22% thanks to the acquisition of HGST. 2003 was a remarkable period for SanDisk (+22%) in the growing market of solid-state technology.

In this Top 12 list, firms offering storage and servers were one more the big losers from 2012 to 2013: Dell -13%, IBM -10%, HP -9%, the exception being Hitachi/HDS +3%.

LSI (-5%) will not be probably in the list next year following its acquisition last December by Avago for $6.6 billion, as we are not sure that Avago will publish separately the figures of LSI in the future.

All Top 12 companies record more than $2 billion in revenue but Dell ($1.7 billion).

Top 12 in Storage Revenue in $ million in FY13

2013 ranking	2012 ranking	Vendors	FY ending in (mo)	2011	2012	2013	2012/2013 growth
1	1	EMC *	12	14,755	15,440	16,132	4%
2	3	WD	6	9,526	12,478	15,351	*23%*
3	2	Seagate	6	10,971	14,939	14,351	*-4%*
4	4	Micron	8	8,788	8,234	9,073	*10%*
5	6	NetApp	4	5,123	6,233	6,332	2%
6	7	SanDisk	12	5,662	5,053	6,170	*22%*
7	5	IBM * & **	12	6,787	6,500	5,850	*-10%*
8	8	HDS + Japan	3	3,864	4,443	4,559	3%
9	9	HP *	10	4,056	3,815	3,475	*-9%*
10	11	Symantec *	3	2,307	2,412	2,479	3%
11	10	LSI	12	2,044	2,506	2,370	*-5%*
12	12	Dell *	1	2,295	1,943	1,699	-13%
		TOTAL		76,178	83,996	87,841	5%

(Compilation by StorageNewsletter.com)
* storage only
** estimate, and without Tivoli software

Comments for three Asian companies: Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba:

For Hitachi, we only rank here wholly-owned subsidiary HDS (including storage systems sold in Japan). But the Japanese group has two other storage activities: wholly-owned subsidiary Hitachi Maxell in storage media and the joint venture Hitachi-LG storage with LG in optical disc drives not included here.
Samsung, no more in HDDs, could merit to be included in the Top 12 but the company does not precisely publish revenue in NAND flash chips and SSDs. The only figure we got: for calendar year 2013, these two activities, including DRAM, registered sales of KRW 37.44 trillion ($35 billion), +7% from the former annual period.
It also not easy to get numbers from Toshiba involved HDDs, SSDs, flash chips, and optical disc products. We just learned that it recorded ¥1,335 billion yens in FY13 ended March 2013 (-7% from 2012) in semiconductor and storage products, the equivalent of around $13.1 billion.

Notes:

Here storage is defined as the activity of recording and retrieving computer data using any form of digital devices (based on magnetic, tape, optical, non volatile solid-state – not RAM -, and subsystems) including all associated connectivity, software and services.
For this ranking we used the companies’ financial results for their fiscal year 2013 – not the calendar year – ending in any month of 2013. We got official figures, no estimations – but for IBM – for all of them and for storage only.

Historically, here are the winners’ circle since 1991:

	?1	?2	?3
1991	IBM Adstar	Seagate	Memorex Telex
1992	IBM Adstar	Seagate	Conner
1993	IBM SSD	Seagate	Conner
1994	IBM SSD	Seagate	Quantum
1995	Seagate	IBM SSD	Quantum
1996	Seagate	Quantum	WD
1997	Seagate	Quantum	Compaq
1998	Seagate	Quantum	Compaq
1999	Seagate	EMC	Quantum
2000	EMC	Seagate	Maxtor
2001	EMC	Seagate	Maxtor
2002	Seagate	EMC	Maxtor
2003	Seagate	EMC	Hitachi GST
2004	EMC	Seagate	BenQ
2005	EMC	Seagate	Hitachi GST
2006	EMC	Seagate	Hitachi GST
2007	EMC	Seagate	Hitachi GST
2008	EMC	Seagate	WD
2009	EMC	Seagate	WD
2010	EMC	Seagate	WD
2011	EMC	Seagate	WD
2012	EMC	Seagate	WD
2013	EMC	WD	Seagate

(Source: StorageNewsletter.com)