Although the fourth quarter proved to be very challenging, the external storage market in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMA) ranked among the fastest growing globally in 2012, demonstrating a double-digit growth rate of 11.6 percent year on year, according to new research from IDC.

EMC, HP and IBM (News - Alert) are the apparent market contenders and storage systems shipped generated revenues of $2,014 million, representing a total capacity of 1,189.6 PB. The capacity increased by 33.9 percent year on year, at half the 2011 pace, as the market showed some reluctance to restore the dollar per gigabyte decline trend to previous levels, according to Pavel Roland, IDC’s (News - Alert) research manager for storage systems in the CEMA region.

“If we considered 2011 to be the year of high-end storage in the region, then 2012 was the year of the midrange solutions,” Roland said in a statement. “There is a notable shift to lower pricebands by enterprise users on one side, and enterprise capabilities previously only available in high-end systems, now offered by vendors at midrange prices, on the other.”

EMC’s (News - Alert) revenue grew year on year faster than the market average to capture a market value share of 38.6 percent, exceeding the combined market share of the next two contenders – IBM and HP.

“EMC’s results were influenced mainly by large project wins in Russia and some countries in the Middle East. IBM and HP captured 17.1 percent and 16.6 percent of the market, respectively,” IDC said in a statement.

IDC said that HP’s revenues stagnated because of losses incurred from the phasing out of the EVA systems and the company’s “inability to repeat the success of its high-end XP family.” 3PAR performance was dubbed as “outstanding,” but failed to help HP achieve overall growth. Most vendors recorded double-digit revenue growth year-on-year, with Fujitsu (News - Alert) and DataDirect Networks multiplying their market shares in the Middle East region, albeit from a small base.

According to IDC, midrange storage class shipments accounted for 55 percent share of total market value.