There is little sign yet that the economic downturn is encouraging people to store less data, but growth rates at market leaders are slowing under price pressure.

Global revenue from disk storage systems was up 11.3% in 2008, according to research firm Gartner, with sales of these stand-alone (external controlled-based) systems totalling $18 billion.

There were no notable changes in market share leadership, with EMC continuing to dominate with 25% of the market followed by IBM at 13.6%, HP at 11.6% and Hitachi/HDS at 9.2%. Although Dell came fifth with 8.8% of the market, it showed the strongest year-on-year growth of 15%. Among the top companies, only IBM showed negative growth, with disk systems revenues falling 0.7%

However, in the closing quarter of the year there was evidence of a slowdown in revenue growth. The market rose by 5.4% over the same period last year to $4.98 billion. And IBM’s erosion was confirmed, with sales falling 8.7% and slicing 2.4% from its market share. There was also shrinkage in disk systems revenues at Sun, where 4.1% was knocked off last year’s figures. Again, Dell shone through as the clear winner; its revenue growth of 11.3% was the only performance in double figures.

Gartner analyst Donna Taylor said the figures indicated the resilience of the storage industry and were “all the more impressive given the current economic downturn.”