But the company is turning the tables, pointing to International Data Corporation (IDC) research that says IBM passed HP in worldwide external disk storage systems revenue for Q4 2006.
Based revenue on revenue, IBM is now the second biggest storage provider. EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 22.1 per cent, but Big Blue enjoyed an 18.6 per cent in the fourth quarter, compared to HP’s 13.7 per cent.
For the full year IBM achieved 15.1 per cent revenue share, compared ot HP’s14.3 per cent.
The 2006 numbers represent Big Blue’s best result in the external disk storage market since 1998. For the full year, the company grew its revenues by 10.5 per cent, compared to HP’s less than 1 per cent growth.
IBM also posted the fastest growth of the top five vendors in the fourth quarter, outpacing Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard and Hitachi.
The company external storage growth was especially strong in the Asia-Pacific, where it expanded more than 19 per cent and became the top selling vendor for the first time.
“This is the second major product segment that IBM has eclipsed HP since the Compaq acquisition. First it was Unix servers, and now external disk storage,” said IBM System Storage general manager Andy Monshaw.
“Meanwhile, IBM continues to expand its presence in storage. In 2006, IBM refreshed its product line, introducing new industry-leading storage products from high-end disk systems to entry-level offerings,” Monshaw said.
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