Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/12/03/tape_media_sales_drop_flattening_out/
Tape straightens its tie, speeds away from villain's lair: I think I'll die another day
Reports of sales death plunge have been greatly exaggerated
Posted in Storage, 3rd December 2013 09:02 GMT
Declines in the sales of tape media are decreasing and the death of tape has now been postponed - indefinitely.
The Santa Clara Consulting Group tracks the tape market on a quarterly basis and its latest release describes what happened in the third 2013 quarter. Total backup tape cartridge sales were $141.73m with LTO format tapes accounting for 95 per cent of that at $134.35m.
LTO Media type percentages were:
- LTO-4 at 38 per cent of units and 30 per cent of dollars
- LTO-5 at 37 per cent of units and 35 per cent of dollars
- LTO-3 at 13 per cent of units and 11 per cent of dollars
- LTO-6 with 8 per cent of the units and 22 per cent of the dollars
- LTO-1 and LTO-2 at 3 per cent of the units and the dollars
HP has a 31 per cent share of the LTO media market, with Fuji in second place and IBM third.
The second largest format by volume was DDS/DAT with combined media sales of $4.9m. DLS, DLT-V, AIT and QIC media sales followed.
The chart shows that the decline in tape media sales is levelling out at around $140m a quarter. Perhaps, just perhaps, with the rise of archival tape use in the cloud, where its unrivalled cost/GB can blow disk archives out of the water, general use of tape for archiving is now stabilising and may even start rising. That would be a tape turn-up for the books.
For a more detailed tape market view, subscribe to Santa Clara Consulting Group’s quarterly backup tracker by email to dbunzlel@sccg.com. ®