EMC, IBM dominate NetApp in Storage Market for Middle East and Africa

The Nigerian market has continued to drive the resurgence of the external storage market in the Middle East and Africa region, with impressive results that has seen EMC and IBM dominating in that market. The external storage market in the Middle East and Africa  (MEA) region suffered a year-on-year decline in the last quarter of 2012,  according  to  the  latest  data from International Data Corporation (IDC),  the  premier  global  provider  of  market  intelligence,  advisory services,  and events for the information technology, telecom, and consumer technology  markets.  Referencing its EMEA Quarterly Disk Storage Systems

Tracker, the research firm today announced that external storage revenue in the MEA region plummeted year on year in Q4 2012 to total $272 million, with terabyte capacity rising slightly by a modest 8% over the same period.

''The  decline  can be attributed to a considerable reduction in the number of  projects  in  the  MEA  region  involving  large-scale deployments when compared to previous years," says Swapna Subramani, senior research analyst at  IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. "However, we remain bullish on the external  storage  trend  moving forward owing to the overall resilience of the  market,  which  will  be  bolstered  by  new  projects  and government initiatives in the health and education sectors."

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia was the only country to register strong year-on-year growth, expanding 60% in Q4 2012. "This growth was driven by several projects in the Kingdom’s telecommunications and education sectors," says Subramani.

The UAE external storage market experienced a 3% year-on-year decline in revenue during Q4 2012, while in contrast Qatar posted modest growth of 9%, fueled by demand from the government and education sectors. "IDC expects to see further growth within the government, automotive, financial services, and petrochemicals sectors, among others in the region," says Subramani.

The   North   Africa  region  (including  Morocco,  Algeria,  and  Tunisia) experienced  a  continued  slump in Q4 2012 as a result of political unrest and  spiraling  inflation.  South Africa also faced a decline in Q4 2012 owing to the seasonal/cyclical trend of infrastructure uptake in the country.  Nigeria  was  the  bright spot within the African market, posting healthy  double-digit  growth  that  can  be  attributed  to  deals  in the financial   and  telecommunications  sectors.  ‘‘Enterprise deals in key verticals will continue  to  play a pivotal role in shaping trends in the African storage market,'' says Subramani.

From  a  protocol perspective, Infiniband once again experienced tremendous year-on-year growth. Telecom-industry investments helped drive double-digit growth for NAS and DAS protocols, while RAID dominated redundancy with over 99% share  of  all shipped models. Mid-range devices dominated the storage class with over 58% share of external storage devices.

From a vendor perspective, EMC retained its top spot in the market with over 48% share on the back of sizeable projects in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Nigeria.  IBM secured second place with just over 14% share, although the vendor suffered a decline in revenue year on year. Netapp placed third with just over 10% share, while HP followed closely behind with just under 10% share of the MEA market. Dell witnessed a stark decline in revenue with 4% share in the last quarter of 2012.

IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker provides timely market information on the disk storage systems market in Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and the Middle East and Africa. Markets can be measured in terms of new storage capacity shipped, factory value, and end-user value of shipments. The tracker provides insight into the impact of market changes, key trends, and the results of vendors' new product, marketing, and channel activities.

IDC predicts Tablets to Overtake PC Market by 2016 in Middle East and Africa

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) tablet market posted a much better than anticipated year-on-year growth rate – reaching a total of 1.36 million units for the fourth quarter of 2012. This is according to the latest results released by International Data Corporation (IDC), the premier global market intelligence and advisory firm for the information technology and telecommunications markets.

The overall MEA tablet market in 2012 grew by 90% year-on-year. This surge is the result of a number of factors, including cheaper tablet entrants,reduced prices by vendors, and overall rising consumer demand for these devices. Increasing interest in tablets as an educational tool will ensure further strong growth throughout the MEA region.

"Currently, tablets are used predominantly as entertainment devices" says Victoria Mendes, a research analyst with Personal Computing, Systems and Infrastructure Solutions at IDC. "However, we expect to see bigger demand for tablets in the corporate segment. In particular, we expect OEMs to use the enhanced features and capabilities of the Windows 8 platform to lure their existing corporate clients into adopting tablets for their organizations. This will, however, have to be coupled with lowered prices, as tablets running on the Windows 8 operating system are much more expensive than those running on Android OS, especially in light of the tough economic situation," she added.

From an operating systems perspective, the share of iOS in the MEA region is expected to decline, while Android and Windows will continue to grow throughout the forecast period. "Low-cost models are expected to be one of the key contributors towards the growth of the tablet market, boosting the share of Android as well," says Fouad Charakla, research manager at IDC.

"However, these low-cost tablets will not be considered as primary computing devices by most end-users." "International vendors are trying to keep up with the exploding number of low-cost tablets through the introduction of smaller screen sizes and slightly lower-end models, to cater to cash-strapped consumers", notes Mendes. "This could mean that any advancement in terms of new features and higher end processing may be compromised in order to gain market share in the short term."

At a country level, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are expected to continue to contribute the most to the growth of the MEA region. The Saudi market in particular is very price sensitive and, as such, the market volume share of low-cost tablets is expected to increase heavily.

Tablets are ideal for easy connectivity and portability. They represent a category in between traditional notebooks and mini notebooks, as they are more portable than the former and more powerful than the latter. This is expected to be a major driver of the tablet market's growth in the MEA region throughout the forecast period.

Since the first tablet was introduced, this category has quickly gained market share and is expected to capture further share of the overall market. IDC expects tablet shipments to exceed portable PC shipments in the MEA region by 2016.