The worldwide personal and entry-level storage (PELS) market grew 10% on last year, shipping 16.8m units during the second quarter of 2013, according to a report from International Data Corporation (IDC).

According to the report, the shipment value increased 7.3% year over year (YoY) to $1.5bn during the quarter, marking a third consecutive quarter of growth.

IDC Storage Systems senior research analyst Liz Conner said that 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.

"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," Conner said.

"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."

During the second quarter HDD vendors’ market share increased by 73.6% in PELS units shipped, while the entry-level storage market was dominated by the mainstream non-HDD vendors with 72.1% unit shipment market share, 5.7 point drop year over year.

The entry-level storage shipments grew 3.2% YoY, while the higher bay devices increased by 23.4% YoY in the entry-level market.

For the second quarter of 2013, the personal storage shipments went up 17.6% YoY, which included single bay personal storage devices that represented 97% of the personal storage units shipped.