IDC: Worldwide External Enterprise Storage Systems Market Revenue Increased 2.1% During Third Quarter of 2025

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, the external OEM enterprise storage systems (ESS) market grew 2.1% year-over-year (YoY) in the third quarter of 2025 reaching $8.0 billion in vendor revenue. From the historical perspective, this level of growth is solid for the mature ESS market but still is eclipsed by the high double-digit growth in the server market, which is driven by investments in accelerated server infrastructure.

Revenue associated with All Flash Arrays showed more dynamic by growing 17.6% YoY while Hybrid Flash Arrays and HDDs Arrays declined 9.8% and 6.3% respectively.

“The penetration of AI-infused applications and AI models into corporate datacenter will increase the need for more dedicated and efficient enterprise storage systems. IDC expects growing demand for flash storage to support projects related to artificial intelligence, both for training and inferencing,” said Juan Seminara, research director, Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers.

When slicing the market by price bands groups, the fastest growing portion was Midrange (systems with average selling price from 25$K to 250$K) that showed 8.1% growth in the quarter that already represents 67.5% of the total external storage market, while High End (systems more than 250$K) declined 9.0% and Entry (systems less than $25K) decrease by 8.0%.

External Storage Regional Market Results
Regional view shows disparate performance with double digit growth in Japan, Canada and EMEA that grew 14.4%, 12.6% and 10.5% respectively- PRC and APeJC showed single digit growth of 9.5% and 8.6% while Latin America barely decrease by 0.9%. The negative note of the quarter was USA performance that showed a 9.9% decrease compared to the same quarter of 2024 after a weak performance in the OEM market.

Overall External Storage Market Standings, by Company
Despite a single digit decline, Dell Technologies led the External ESS market with 22.7% revenue share while is focusing more on core products, Huawei reached second place with 12.0% revenue share fueled by a very strong performance in PRC market. NetApp finished third with 9.4% share thanks to a solid performance in AFA. Pure storage reached fourth place with 6.8% share due to a double-digit growth in the quarter. Finally, Hewlett Packard Enterprise was fifth with a 5.6% market share.

Top 5 Companies, Worldwide External ESS Market, Third Quarter of 2025
(Vendor Revenue in US$ millions)

Company	3Q25 Vendor Revenue	3Q25 Market Share	3Q24 Vendor Revenue	3Q24 Market Share	3Q25/3Q24 Revenue Growth
1. Dell Technologies	$1,812.91	22.7%	$1,905.59	24.4%	-4.9%
2. Huawei	$953.02	12.0%	$870.27	11.1%	9.5%
3. NetApp	$750.16	9.4%	$729.74	9.3%	2.8%
4. Pure Storage	$539.22	6.8%	$466.79	6.0%	15.5%
5. Hewlett Packard Enterprise	$450.23	5.6%	$486.83	6.2%	-7.5%
Rest of Market	$3,465.04	43.5%	$3,350.32	42.9%	3.4%
Total	$7,970.58	100.0%	$7,809.55	100.0%	2.1%
Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, December 11, 2025.

Comments

This IDC revenue report shows interesting results as the market footprint is masked by various events. Obviously some brands occupy leading presence like Dell, NetApp, Pure Storage and HPE even if IBM, Lenovo or Fujitsu are not listed in the top 5. This top 5 vendors cover 57% with $4.5 billion but the rest of the market with 43% reaches $3.5 billion. Dell, #1, represents almost 23% and Huawei, #2, 12%. It means that these two vendors cover 35% of the market, which illustrates some domination.

On the growth aspect, Pure Storage had 15.5% and Huawei 10% YoY but Dell and HPE had respectively 5% and 7.5% decline. Globally the market size is almost flat with just 2.1% growth.

Some positions reflect market dynamism with real deals battles between NetApp and Pure Storage with HPE as well. Dell represents 2x Huawei's revenue, 2.4x NetApp's, 3.3x Pure's and 4x HPE's.

We also understand why HPE took some recent decision on storage. The battle between 2 pure storage players such as NetApp and Pure Storage is intense. Huawei, #2, confirms the quality of the product line and alignment with users' needs. We can even imagine their position if some geopolitic pressures would disappear... Next quarter and full year results will be interesting to see if positions are maintained.