Worldwide personal and entry-level storage (PELS) shipments declined by 6.4 per cent year over year and 13.6 percent sequentially, finishing the first quarter of 2015 (1Q15) with 17.6 million units.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Personal and Entry Level Storage Tracker, shipment values declined along with unit shipments, down 11.6 per cent from a year ago to $US1.5 billion.
“Broadly speaking, the size of this market has changed little over the past two and a half years,” adds Jingwen Li, Research Analyst, Storage Systems, IDC.
“This is partly due to competition from public cloud offerings and partly due to a fundamental shift of media consumption preferences.
“It's important to note, however, that there are still untapped growth opportunities within this market. Personal and entry level NAS, for example, would benefit greatly from an increased level of marketing programs focused on building awareness.”
According to IDC, dual interface products grew at a significant rate of 56.7 per cent year over year, albeit off a small base.
USB/Thunderbolt and USB/WiFi offerings contributed most of the growth of this category and continued to benefit from a shift away from eSATA, FireWire, and Thunderbolt-only offerings.
For the first quarter of 2015, HDD vendors continued to increase their share in total PELS units shipped, gaining 0.8 percentage point year over year to grow to 78.8 per cent market share.
Mainstream non-HDD vendors dominated the entry-level storage segment, but lost market share to HDD vendors. In 1Q15, HDD vendors gained 13.2 percentage points from a year ago to represent 23.2 per cent of the entry-level storage market.
