The worldwide personal and entry-level storage (PELS) market grew 10.7% year over year with 16.8 million units shipped in the second quarter of 2013 (2Q13), according to the International Data Corp. (IDC).

Shipment value experienced growth of 7.3% year over year to US$1.5 billion. This is the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in worldwide shipment value.

"The second quarter of 2013 brought continued shipment and revenue growth, as well as a return to normal for the personal and entry-level storage market," says Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "For the last four quarters, the PELS market has seen a distinct focus on recovery after the Thailand floods and resulting hard disk drive (HDD) shortage. The second quarter brought back a sense of 'business as usual' with vendors starting to shift their focus from recovery to the future, with added investments in Personal Cloud Storage, mobile device connectivity, emerging markets, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt."

HDD vendors continue to increase share in PELS units shipped, gaining 4.6 points year over year to grow to 73.6% market share. However the entry-level storage market continues to be dominated by the mainstream non-HDD vendors with 72.1% unit shipment market share, down 5.7 point year over year.

The entry-level storage market continued to grow with unit shipments growing 3.2% year over year. Specifically, the entry-level market saw strong growth in the higher bay devices (6, 8, and 12 bays), which saw units shipped grow 23.4% year over year.

In 2Q13 the personal storage market saw good growth in dual-bay products, where unit shipments were up 17.6% year over year. Single bay personal storage devices remain the most popular choice, representing 97.0% of the personal storage units shipped in 2Q13.

Personal storage represents 98.9% of the PELS units shipped and 87.9% of the shipment value in 2Q13.

The 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch form factors each saw units shipped increase 2.7% and 13.4% year over year, respectively. However the 3.5-inch form factor continues to give way to the more portable 2.5-inch form factor, with 3.5-inch losing 1.8 percentage points year over year.