EMC hits consumer market

EMC Corp, the world's largest data storage company, yesterday 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.