Terabyte storage heading for consumer market

EMC is considering entering the consumer market with its storage products because of the predicted digital information explosion over the next three years.

IDC and EMC are predicting a 60 per cent compound annual growth rate in digital information to £988m by 2010, and that massive growth in data would lead to home computer users needing more than one terabyte - or 1,000GB - of storage.

Speaking at the company's annual EMC World conference in Orlando this week, Joe Tucci, chairman, president and CEO of EMC, said: "The average middle-class person will have more than a terabyte of storage within three years."

Tucci admitted EMC is looking at the possibility of bringing out consumer products to meet that demand. "That's something we have our eye on building products for," he said.

But he said the company is still focused on its core business products and hasn't yet made a decision whether to enter the consumer market as well: "We haven't made a decision. Do we want to play there? I don't know. We don't have that [consumer market] expertise."

Tucci added that one option would be to follow the 'Intel Inside' strategy and get the storage technology "tucked inside" computers by the manufacturers. But he said for now EMC's immediate growth will continue to be in enterprise software and services, followed by hardware.

Other enterprise storage vendors are eyeing up the lucrative consumer mass-market, which is being fuelled by the vast growth in personal technology and user-generated digital data, music, images and information. Last year storage stalwart Seagate said its enterprise business will become increasingly insignificant because of the double-digit growth opportunities in the consumer market.

Hitachi is also launching a one terabyte hard drive for desktops this year aimed squarely at the home PC user, while Microsoft chairman Bill Gates - speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year - said a server for the home will be needed to cope with the explosion in digital content created and stored by individuals and families.