Costa Mesa’s Emulex Corp. eked out a small second-quarter market share gain at the expense of top rival Aliso Viejo’s QLogic Corp. for a profitable bit of electronics for data storage networks.
Emulex and QLogic dominate the market for what are called host bus adapters, small cards loaded with chips that help speed up the flow of data on storage networks.
For the second quarter, Emulex had 39% of the market for host bus adapters. QLogic continued to lead at 55% according to data from Redwood City-based market tracker Dell’Oro Group Inc.
The two companies were neck-and-neck for some time before QLogic passed up Emulex with a market share lead a few years ago.
In the second quarter, QLogic lost one percentage point of market share from the first quarter and gained one point a year earlier.
Emulex was up two points from 37% in the first quarter and one point from a year earlier.
The two companies on Thursday released dueling press releases that play up their market share gains in other storage products that Dell’Oro tracks.
QLogic and Emulex have a long-held duopoly in host bus adapters, with more than 80% of the market between them.
Other small players include Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and LSI Corp.
QLogic had a recent market value of about $1.7 billion. Emulex’s market share was around $800 million at the close of trading on Thursday.
