PELS Market Declines in The First Quarter of 2015

Personal and entry-level storage (PELS) shipments declined 6.4% on year and 13.6% sequentially, finishing the first quarter of 2015 with 17.6 million units, according to the IDC Worldwide Personal and Entry Level Storage Tracker. Shipment values declined along with shipments, down 11.6% from a year ago to US$1.5 billion.

"Broadly speaking, the size of this market has changed little over the past two and a half years. This is partly due to competition from public cloud offerings and partly due to a fundamental shift of media consumption preferences," said Jingwen Li, research analyst, Storage Systems. "It's important to note, however, that there are still untapped growth opportunities within this market. Personal and entry-level NAS, for example, would benefit greatly from an increased level of marketing programs focused on building awareness."

Dual interface products grew at a significant rate of 56.7% on year, albeit off a small base. USB/Thunderbolt and USB/Wi-Fi offerings contributed most of the growth of this category and continued to benefit from a shift away from eSATA, FireWire, and Thunderbolt-only offerings.

For the first quarter of 2015, HDD vendors continued to increase their share in total PELS units shipped, gaining 0.8pp on year to grow to 78.8% market share. Mainstream non-HDD vendors dominated the entry-level storage segment, but lost market share to HDD vendors. In the first quarter of 2015, HDD vendors gained 13.2pp from a year ago to represent 23.2% of the entry-level storage market.