A total of 783 petabytes of storage capability was shipped in the third quarter of 2006, according to research by industry watcher IDC, 50% more than in the comparable period in 2006.

With customers still expecting the price per megabyte stored to fall, revenue growth was on a less spectacular scale. During the quarter, overall external disk storage sales grew 10% from year-ago figures to reach $4.3 billion – the sector’s 14th consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth.

IDC says that the primary drivers for the continued growth include the consolidation that results from increased server virtualisation, branch office consolidation, and a new wave of organisations looking to store vast amounts of fixed content.

EMC continues to hold the lion’s share of the external disk storage market with 21.4% of the pie in the third quarter. In second and third position were HP and IBM, with 17.6% and 13.7% of the market respectively. Dell and Hitachi rounded the top 5 with revenue share of around 8% each.

EMC also experienced the biggest surge in revenue, growing at 18%, followed by IBM which showed a 14% rise in sales.

The boom in network disk storage continued, with revenues from network attached storage (NAS) systems and open storage area network (SAN) systems jumping 17.2% year-over-year to more than $3.0 billion. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 27.1% revenue share, followed by HP and IBM which laid claim to 17.9% and 12.5% revenue share, respectively.

The iSCSI SAN market continued to show strong momentum, doubling in size compared to the prior year’s quarter. Network Appliance continues to lead that emerging market with 21.5% share, followed by EMC with 16.9% share.