The external OEM enterprise storage systems (ESS) market showed a solid performance in the fourth quarter of 2025 reaching $9,7-billion in vendor revenue led by positive growth from top vendors and across most of the regions, according to IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly ESS Tracker.
The Enterprise Storage Market, that was somehow eclipsed by the high double-digit growth in the server market, showed a positive path in the quarter as companies started to invest in the postponed storage infrastructure refresh.
- External OEM enterprise storage systems (ESS) market grew 5,5% YoY in the fourth quarter of 2025.
- Revenue associated with All Flash Arrays continue to show more dynamic by growing 18,1% YoY, but surprisingly also Hard Disk Drives Arrays presented a positive growth of 3,1% while Hybrid Flash Arrays declined by 6,7%.
- When slicing the market by price bands groups, the fastest growing portion continues to be the Midrange (systems with average selling price from $25 000 to $250 000) showing an 8,5% growth representing 66% of the total external storage market. Also, High End systems(more than $250 000) showed a growth of 5,4% in the quarter market, while Entry systems (less than $25 000) declined by 6,9%.
- For calendar year 2025 the market finished growing 3,9% compared to 2024, reaching a yearly record of $33-billion dollars revenue.
- Shortage of components is helping to keep value high so that we are seeing again a growth in capacity proportional value ($/GB) of 5,5% compared to same quarter of 2024.
- Even though recession fears remain low, global economy slow growth and geopolitical tensions represent the main worry for the future.
The volatile prices on certain components such as SSDs, HDDs and DRAM have impacted on the storage market with some companies trying to secure shipments in advance due to the fear of further increments. Also, some are already picking a mix that includes the former heavy declining HDDs based platforms to keep costs under control.
“Storage demand would navigate between a continued increase on components prices and the growing infrastructure refreshing needs from companies of all sizes – we might see a positive 2026 for the market with end users trying to balance their CAPEX between hardware, software, management efficiency, and as a service models in order to meet their needs,” says Juan Seminara, research director, Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers.
Regional market results
Regional view shows positive performance across most of the regions with PRC and the US growing above the media by 8,0% and 6,9% respectively. EMEA grew by 4,3% and Latin America 1,8% – both a bit below the average. The rest where near flat with Japan growing 0,8% while APeJC and Canada declined 0,1% and 0,8%.
Overall standings by company
Dell Technologies led the ESS market with 23,7% revenue share being able to gain 0.3 points of share. Huawei reached second place with 12,6% revenue share fueled by a very strong performance in PRC market. NetApp finished third with 8,1% share thanks to a solid performance in AFA. Everpure reached fourth place with 7,1% share due to a double-digit growth in the quarter. Finally, IBM was fifth with a 6,3% market share.