Everyday new service providers are entering into the cloud space giving new offers for hard drive space up in the sky. Microsoft with SkyDrive, DropBox one of the pioneers,  Adrive, Box.net, Carbonite list goes on….

Now with this list being growing day by day it would be fascinating to watch the trends growing in this arena. What about the fate of the list of external hard drive manufacturers like Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung, Western Digital, Transcend Storejet, Lacie Rikiki and the innumerous brands we have in the domestic markets dumped straight from Chinatown?

Has the growth of cloud overshadowed the hard disk market and eaten up any major portion of the pie?

Storage being the fastest  cloud service growing at a rate of 9% ie  $1.6Billion  to  14%  ie over  $14Billion  as per the IDC reports. IDC  reports  show that the worldwide external disk storage revenue has been declining year over year 18.3% in 2009 totalling $4.1Billion. Also the growing success of cloud in stealing the confidence of the customers  could be another nail on the coffin of external hard disks.

The backup solution strategies have paid off to the hard disk companies like Lacie, but at the same time cloud has been pouring down on to the desktop in the form of huge number of desktop applications to pull up the data from local hard disks.

The cloud will lie peacefully on the top of the Gartner hyperbole untill they find another technology to take the “Hype-dom”.  Till then cloud hype can shatter many more markets.