"Historically, consumers have stored content on their PCs, but as we enter the post-PC era, consumers are using multiple connected devices, the majority of which are equipped with cameras. This is leading to a massive increase in new user-generated content that requires storage," said Shalini Verma, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner. "With the emergence of the personal cloud, this fast-growing consumer digital content will quickly get disaggregated from connected devices," she said.
Gartner predicts that worldwide consumer digital storage needs will grow from 329 exabytes (1 exabyte = 1 073 741 824 gigabytes) in 2011 to 4.1 zettabytes (1zettabyte = 1024 exabytes) in 2016. This includes digital content stored in PCs, smartphones, tablets, hard-disk drives (HDDs), network attached storage (NAS) and cloud repositories.
The bulk of the cloud storage needs of consumers in the near term will be met by social media sites such as Facebook, which offer free storage space for uploading photos and videos for social sharing. Verma said that while online backup services are the most well-known cloud storage providers, their total storage allocated to consumers and "prosumers" is small relative to that maintained by social media sites.
Average storage per household will grow from 464 gigabytes in 2011 to 3.3 terabytes in 2016. In the first half of 2012, a shortage in supply of HDDs as a result of the floods in Thailand provided an impetus for cloud storage adoption, leading to an unusual overall growth rate between 2011 and 2012.
Worldwide consumer digital storage needs will grow from 329 exabytes (1 exabyte = 1 073 741 824 gigabytes) in 2011 to 4.1 zettabytes (1 zettabyte = 1024 exabytes) in 2016.