Business News Holding

Tag: revenues

  • Disk Storage System Sales Badly Impacted By Economy


    Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues fell 13.6 per cent year-on-year to USD $4.2 billion in the first quarter of 2009 (1Q09), according to IDC.

    For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market declined to USD $5.6 billion in revenues, an 18.2 per cent decline from the prior year’s first quarter.

    Steve Scully, research manager, Enterprise Storage at IDC, said the results were driven by continued weakness in server systems sales.

    He said total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 2,146 petabytes, growing 14.8 per cent year over year.

    "The disk storage system vendors are really seeing the impact of the global economic downturn in the first quarter revenues," he said.

    "However, while total revenues declined year over year, the overall storage capacity shipped continued to grow.

    "These contrasting results are due to a combination of currency implications, lower overall sales, shifts in product mix, and aggressive pricing actions."

    Liz Conner, research analyst, Storage Systems, said that although the economic crisis was fully realized by the enterprise storage systems market in the first quarter of 2009, the quarter wasn’t without its bright spots.

    "Entry-level price bands ($0K – $14.99K) showed 9.9 per cent year-over-year growth and the midrange price band ($15K – $49.99K) was flat year over year," she said.

    This supported IDC’s belief that storage products are still in demand, according to Conner, adding that customer spending was trending towards more modular, price point options.

    "In addition, the high-end price band ($300K-499.99K) saw a 14.5 per cent year-over-year growth as vendors discounted their very high-end products, shifting the ASV’s into lower price bands in order to meet the demand for high-end storage while accounting for reduced IT budgets," she said.

    EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 20.7 per cent revenue share in the first quarter, followed by HP and IBM in a statistical tie for the second position with 11.5 per cent and 11.3 per cent revenue share, respectively.

    Dell and Hitachi finished the quarter in a statistical tie for fourth place with 9.8 per cent and 9.4 per cent revenue share respectively.

    The total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open SAN) had year-over-year growth of minus 12.5 per cent in the first quarter with more than USD $3.1 billion in revenues.

    EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 26.0 per cent revenue share, followed by NetApp with 12.0 per cent revenue share.

    In the Open SAN market, which declined 14.3 per cent year over year, EMC lead with 21.9 per cent revenue share.

    The NAS market declined 6.7 per cent year over year, led by EMC with 39.0 per cent revenue share and followed by NetApp with 28.7 per cent share.

    The iSCSI SAN market continued to show strong momentum, posting 40.5 per cent revenue growth compared to the prior year’s quarter.

    Dell led the market with 36.4 per cent revenue share, followed by EMC with 15.8 per cent.

    Natalya Yezhkova, research manager, IDC Storage Systems, said price sensitivity was a big factor in the healthy growth of iSCSI SAN.

    He said that was the only installation environment segment that ended the quarter in positive territory.

    "While still a relatively small segment of the market, iSCSI SAN is the bright spot for end users and for vendors, as it helps end users to deploy network storage, often with enterprise-class functionality, at a lower price point than traditional FC SAN, and, thus, creates more selling opportunities for vendors," he said.

  • HD Uptake Drives ZON's Q1 Figures


    Portugal’s leading cable provider ZON has doubled the take-up of its HD DVR.

    Called the ZON Box, it was installed in 93,000 homes in the first quarter of 2009, pushing total installations up to 184,000 – 12 per cent of the total customer base.

    ZON has attributed the success of the high-def product to an increase in per subscriber RGUs to 1.94, as ARPU grew by 3.5 per cent year-on-year to EUROS 32.7.

    The total number of subscribers receiving digital extended basic increased from 399,800 to 539,600.

    Premium pay-TV subscribers increased slightly to 835,300.

    Operating Revenues increased to EUROS 201.5 million in 1Q09, a year on year growth of 7.1 per cent giving an EBITDA increased to EUROS 64.3 million.

  • MACH Aims To Offset EU Mobile Roaming Charge Cap Losses


    MACH has announced a range of solutions designed to offset the impact on mobile operator roaming revenues of the recent European Union (EU) pricing regulations.

    The company says its EU Compliance Power Pack will immediately counter the forecast reduction in revenues by implementing smart rating and price optimisation.

    It says this allows mobile operators to reprice certain services such as voice and SMS in order to create new revenue streams offsetting the anticipated effects of the EU regulation.

    The measures introduced by European regulators impose wide-ranging pricing restrictions and administrative obligations on mobile operators.

    Voice, SMS and data service prices will be capped with effect from 1st July 2009, with further reductions in caps becoming effective in 2011.

    Operators will also be required to bill on a per second basis under the new regulations.

    The legislation also requires operators to notify subscribers of high usage to avoid so-called "bill shocks", requiring real-time usage reporting and notification processes.

    European officials said they will monitor changes to other operator charging structures to ensure that these are not increased to compensate for the impact of the new legislation.

    Lodewijk Cornelis, CMO at MACH

    Lodewijk Cornelis, CMO at MACH, said its Power Pack includes a solution to the "bill shock" problem, by triggering timely customer notification whenever a usage threshold is reached.

    He said this solution gives mobile operators the ability to provide customers with timely data usage information while roaming.

    "The regulations approved by the European Parliament, combined with increasing competition both from within the mobile industry and from alternative communications technologies, mean that operators have to continuously monitor and reassess retail and wholesale pricing strategies," he said.

    "MACH solutions turn, what seems at first sight to be, a huge obstacle to growth into an opportunity for operators to differentiate their offerings and reduce their operational costs."

    The EU is also preparing legislation to force carriers to allow VoIP to run on their cellular networks.

    Earlier this month, EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said that "action" should be taken against carriers that use their market power to block "innovative services".

    Cornelis said the new solutions allow operators to use sophisticated simulation techniques to optimise retail and wholesale pricing of non-EU roaming traffic, increasing revenues while at the same time maximising customer value.

    He said The Power Pack also handles the complex task of rating usage data in real time by reference to regulatory capping, and its applications process all of the administrative changes to inter-operator tariff structures to ensure accurate and timely settlement before and after the regulations come into effect.

    MACH clears two out of every three roaming calls on GSM and CDMA networks and settles more than 60 per cent of the inter-operator wholesale invoice amounts.