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.
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