Reuters

Worldwide revenue from data storage systems rose 10.3 percent in the first quarter to $4.2 billion, with the largest and most-expensive systems showing the fastest growth, market researcher IDC reported.

 EMC kept its top ranking in IDC’s quarterly disk storage systems tracker released late Thursday, claiming 21.8 percent of the market, up from 21.4 percent a year earlier. Hewlett-Packard kept the No. 2 spot with 17.9 percent market share, unchanged from a year ago.

IBM’s market share rose to 12 percent from 11.6 percent, keeping it in third place. IBM was followed by Dell with 8.2 percent market share, up from 7.8 percent. In fifth place was Hitachi Data Systems, the data storage business of Japan’s Hitachi Ltd., with 8.1 percent of the market.

Growth was driven by high-end systems costing at least $500,000, as large corporations sought to consolidate data storage in fewer, higher-capacity systems rather than adding smaller machines to existing data centers, said Brad Nisbet, program manager of IDC Storage Systems.

In recent past quarters, growth stemmed from midpriced systems costing $25,000 to $500,000 as customers tried to reduce costs.

“It’s not that the high end has taken over, by any means,” Nisbet said. “But we do see a resurgence. The midrange systems are growing very well, too.”

Revenue from high-end systems rose nearly 40 percent from a year earlier, while midrange systems advanced about 15 percent, IDC said.

EMC’s Symmetrix DMX series of high-capacity storage machines was responsible for a large share of the growth in high-priced systems, Nisbet said.

EMC also sells storage machines to Dell, which resells them as EMC-Dell co-branded systems. Such systems grew 26 percent from a year earlier and accounted for 78 percent of Dell’s overall data storage revenue in the first quarter, Nisbet said.

Nokia, the world’s top mobile phone maker, will unveil on Tuesday a new version of its Internet tablet device that runs Google Talk communications software, sources familiar with the plans said on Friday.

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on Wednesday mocked a $100 laptop computer for developing countries being developed with the backing of rival Google at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The US$100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.

“The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk … and with a tiny little screen,” Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington.

“Hardware is a small part of the cost” of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support.

Before his critique, Gates showed off a new “ultra-mobile computer” which runs Microsoft Windows on a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) touch screen.

Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week.

“If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting there cranking the thing while you’re trying to type,” Gates said.

Gates described the computers as being for shared use, but the project goes under the name “One Laptop per Child.” A representative for the project did not immediately reply to an inquiry seeking comment.

Earlier this year, Google founder Larry Page said his company is backing MIT’s project. He showed a model of the machine that does use a crank as one source of power.

“The laptops … will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data,” according to the project’s Web site.

Intel Corp. said on Tuesday it has moved up to this year its expected roll-out of cards that will let computers access the Internet using Wi-Max, a new long-range, high-speed wireless technology.

Samsung has increased its forecast for 2006 global LCD sales amid booming demand for flat-screen televisions.

Struggling chip Company AMD has moved into the computer design market in an effort to boost sales. The move has been given a boost along by Dell and several other leading PC brands.

The move will initally focus on AMD business desktop computers but will be followed by notebook PCs in the second half of this year. According to Reuters AMD customers who plan to sell the computers include Acer , Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hewlett-Packard , and Lenovo, said Hal Speed, a marketing architect for AMD.

“It’s not like retail,” he said. “People are buying this for work and we really tried to identify the nuggets (of technology for business desktop PCs) that weren’t being looked at.”

The new product line is part of AMD’s efforts to regain its competitive edge against Intel Corpafter a disastrous 2007. AMD has reported six consecutive quarters of net losses as Intel has regained much of the market share that it lost to AMD in 2005 and the first part of 2006.

AMD is also seeking to use the leverage it built with the success of its Opteron microprocessors, which have made inroads into the server market over the last few years against Intel, a larger company.

“AMD has tackled the consumer market, they’ve made significant inroads into the mobile PC market, and they’ve made some inroads into the business market,” said Dean McCarron, an analyst at market research firm In-Stat. “This is an important program for them.”

AMD said Business Class is initially aimed at the small- and medium-size business market, but is also designed to scale up to the biggest corporate clients as well. The desktops include AMD Phenom X3 triple-core and AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processors as well as AMD Athlon X2 dual-core processors.

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