The Middle East and Africa (MEA) external storage market grew just 2% in the first quarter of 2013 to total $233 million, while faster growth is forecast for the rest of the year.

This is according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) ‘EMEA Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker’.

The research firm says that external storage revenue in MEA expanded slightly year-on-year in the first quarter of 2013, with terabyte capacity rising some 32% during the same period.

"The modest growth can be attributed to consistent business typical of the first quarter of the year in MEA," says IDC Middle East, Africa and Turkey senior research analyst Swapna Subramani.

"In the coming quarters, however, strong uptake of external storage systems in MEA is expected owing to large-scale deployments and projects across verticals," added Subramani.

North Africa -- specifically, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia -- experienced a continued slump in external storage shipments in the first quarter of 2013 because of what IDC says has been political unrest and spiraling inflation.

Meanwhile, the South African storage market declined dramatically by 16% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2013 owing has been a decline in projects for Dell and IBM, according to the IDC.

Conversely, Egypt's external storage market “grew significantly” in the same period thanks to projects in the telecommunications and government sectors, says the IDC.

"We remain bullish on the African storage market considering the relatively small installed base and sporadic nature of large-scale enterprise projects," Subramani said.

Further afield, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, excluding the UAE and Saudi Arabia, posted growth of 83% in the external storage market in the first quarter of the year.

IDC says Bahrain and Qatar registered triple-digit growth, bolstered by projects in the government and finance vertical markets.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's storage market expanded 32% year-on-year in Q1 2013.

"This impressive growth was driven by several projects in the kingdom's telecommunications and government sectors," says Subramani.

The external storage market in the UAE recorded 17% growth in revenue compared with 2011, with increased demand evident across various sectors.

And the IDC researchers have gone on to say that from a protocol perspective, ESCON/FICON (Enterprise System Connection/Fibre Connectivity) protocols posted “tremendous year-on-year growth”, driven by IBM projects in the government sector.

Telecom industry investments also continued to drive growth for the NAS (Network Attached Storage) protocol, while fibre channel protocol retained its leading position with the same market share as 1Q12.

Among MEA vendors, the IDC has said that EMC continued its dominance in the region, claiming over 45% share of the total disk storage market because of sizeable projects in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Egypt.

Netapp, meanwhile, secured second place, with just over 11.5% market share in spite of flat year-on-year revenue. IBM and HP followed closely, with approximately 11% market share each. Hitachi emerged as the bright spot among vendors, achieving triple-digit growth in Q1 2013, driven by projects in South Africa and Turkey, the IDC has said.