Worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage revenue totalled $16.4 billion in 2007, an 8.7 percent increase over 2006 revenue of $15.1 billion, according to Gartner.

"Midrange disk array storage continued to bolster the revenue growth in 2007," said Robin Burke, research vice president for Gartner’s global Storage Quarterly Statistics program. "Low-end iSCSI products also began to show growth potential."

There were no market share leadership changes compared with last year. EMC maintained its premier position with 24.6 percent revenue market share. IBM, in second place with 15.0 percent lost share as did third place Hewlett-Packard at 12.3 percent. Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems showed the strongest growth year-on-year at 26.8 percent. Dell recovered from disappointing results in 2006. Due to strong performance in Europe in the fourth quarter, Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers also experienced strong growth rate among the top 8 vendors, as its revenue increased 22.8 percent in 2007.

In the fourth quarter of 2007, worldwide ECB revenue showed double digit growth at 11.9 percent, and no vendor experienced a year-on-year revenue decline. Second place IBM and third place HP both lost a small amount of market share. Six out of the 8 major vendors experienced double digit revenue growth year-on-year. On the rebound, Sun Microsystems exhibited growth of 12.7 percent. Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens growth was mainly due to new product introductions in Europe by Fujitsu Siemens Computers.