BEIJING,  April 3 -- EMC Corp, the world's largest data storage company, Wednesday released a personal storage device in China, its first foray into the consumer market.

    "The amount of digital information created, captured or replicated by individual users is growing tremendously," Steve Leonard, president of EMC Asia-Pacific and Japan, said. "Because of the increasing importance of small users, we decided that we have to be very serious about the consumer space and the small office space."

    EMC's customers are typically big companies and government bodies. But with the increasing popularity of personal digital equipment such as PCs, cellphones and digital cameras in recent years, there's a growing need for storage from individual consumers, who, according to research firm IDC, create about 70 percent of the world's digital information.

    EMC's new product StorageCredenza, which holds four 3.5-inch SATA drives with a capacity of up to 4T bytes, is targeted at multi-PC home and small office users. It was developed by EMC's Chinese research team and will be made available first in China.

    Leonard said the release of the new product in China reflects the country's increasing importance to EMC. "China is leading the way, rather than following the rest of the world," he said.

    EMC posted 24 percent revenue growth last year in the Asia-Pacific and Japan. Leonard said the growth rate in China is "much higher."

    Total storage capacity in China will grow 30-fold from 132 petabytes in 2004 to 4,000 petabytes in 2011, IDC said.

    (Source: China Daily)