Editing Linear Tape-Open (section)

== Sales and market ==
{{Timeline of release years
| title = Tape technologies releases
| subtitle = since 2010,<br />with native storage capacity
| 2010 = '''''LTO-5''''' - 1500 GB
| 2011a = ''[[IBM 3592|TS1140]]'' - 4000 GB
| 2011b = ''[[StorageTek tape formats#T10000|T10000C]]'' - 5000 GB
| 2012 = '''''LTO-6''''' - 2500 GB
| 2013 = ''[[StorageTek tape formats#T10000|T10000D]]'' - 8500 GB
| 2014 = ''[[IBM 3592|TS1150]]'' - 10000 GB
| 2015 = '''''LTO-7''''' - 6000 GB
| 2017 = '''''LTO-8''''' - 12000 GB
| 2018 = ''[[IBM 3592|TS1160]]'' - 20000 GB
| 2021 = '''''LTO-9''''' - 18000 GB
| 2023 = ''[[IBM 3592|TS1170]]'' - 50000 GB
}}
In the course of its existence, LTO has succeeded in completely displacing all other low-end/mid-range tape technologies such as [[Advanced Intelligent Tape|AIT]], [[Digital Linear Tape|DLT]], [[Digital Data Storage|DAT/DDS]], and [[VXA]]. And after the exit of [[StorageTek tape formats#T10000|Oracle StorageTek T10000]] of the high-end market,<ref name="Oracle Support article 2784043_1">{{Cite web|title="T10000C/D New Firmware For Drive Cleaning (Doc ID 2784043.1)"|website=[[Oracle Corporation|Oracle]]|url=https://support.oracle.com/knowledge/Sun%20Microsystems/2784043_1.html}}</ref> only the [[IBM 3592]] series and LTO are still under active development. LTO also competes against [[hard disk drive]]s (HDDs), and its continuous improvement has prevented the predicted "death of tape".<ref name="dying"/>

=== LTO Sales ===
The presence of five certified media manufacturers and four certified mechanism manufacturers for a while produced a competitive market for LTO products. However, {{as of |2019 |lc=y}}, there are only two manufacturers developing media, Sony and Fuji, and only IBM is developing mechanisms.

[[File:Lto-media-shipments-2000-2023.png|thumb|left|LTO media shipments, 2000 - 2023]]
The LTO organization publishes annual media shipments measured in both units and compressed capacity. Media unit shipments peaked in 2008, at about 28 million.<ref name="report-CY17"/>  However, the 152.9 Exabytes of total compressed storage capacity shipped in 2023 is the highest ever reported.<ref>[https://www.lto.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LTOUltrium_AnnualTapeReport.pdf LTO Annual Tape report, covering CY'23]</ref>

Public information on tape drive sales is not readily available. Unit shipment peaked at about 800,000 units in 2008, but have declined since then to about 400,000 units in 2010,<ref name="market strength"/> and to less than 250,000 by the end of 2018<ref name="spectralogic-evaluation"/>

Some reports have shown sales of tape systems have slowed but in terms of EB sold the sales of tape have grown over time. Tape drives tend to last several years in the typical systems.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.lto.org/what-is-lto/ |website=LTO SIG |title=What is LTO tape technology? }}</ref>

=== Comparison to Disk Storage ===

For decades, tape storage has primarily been used only in a few special situations, such as with mainframes or for backup and archiving, so the declining cost of disk made it seem possible that disk would completely take over the remaining uses of tape. In spite of this, the continuing evolution of tape technology, and particularly LTO, has kept tape storage relevant.

Tape and disk storage have some important fundamental differences. Tape generally has lower marginal costs, is more portable, and has better long term stability. These attributes make tape very appealing for large primarily offline data sets.   Disk generally has much lower initial costs, much better access times, and is better suited to normal everyday usage.

Costs get complicated when considering large storage systems. Besides the simple unit cost of the data storage media, there are costs related to the hardware that makes use of and manages the media. Large robotic tape libraries are capable of managing hundreds of petabytes of data. Since most tapes in a library sit passively in their storage slot, the system uses relatively little power per TB stored.   By contrast, disks must be kept powered on, spinning, and attached to some sort of computer system. The cost and capacity of storage arrays and tape libraries varies widely.

As HDD prices have dropped, disk has become cheaper relative to tape drives and cartridges. For decades, the cost of a new LTO tape cartridge plus the tape drive required to make use of it, has been much greater than that of an equivalently sized HDD. However, tape cartridges typically have a substantially lower price per gigabyte than HDDs, so that at very large subsystem capacities, the total price of tape-based subsystems can be lower than HDD based subsystems, particularly when the higher operating costs of HDDs are included in any calculation.<ref name="ProStorage"/>

Tape is also used as ''offline'' copy, which can be protection against ransomware that cipher or delete data (e.g. tape is pulled out of the tape library, blocked from writing after making copy or using WORM technology). In 2019, many businesses used tape for backup and archiving.<ref name="Schwartz"/>

Larger server disks have flooded the market as capacity increments are rolled out. USB boxes with giant second hand server disks make a very cheap backup solution. Tape has faded face of low cost server class disks. The USB enclosure are so inexpensive ($25) they can be shelved directly and labels can be attached easily.