He OEM external enterprise storage systems (ESS) market grew 2.1% year-on-year throughout the third quarter of 2025. This has caused, according to IDC, its sales to reach $8 billion in revenue for suppliers.
Revenues associated with All Flash systems grew the most: 17.6%. Meanwhile, sales of Hybrid Flash and hard drive systems were down 9.8% and 6.3%, respectively. By Price groups, the one that grew the most in sales was the mid-range, systems with an average sales price of between $25,000 and $250,000.
It recorded 8.1% growth in the quarter, and already represents 6.75% of the total external storage market. As for the high-end, which includes systems over $250,000, sales fell 9%. Those of low-end systems also decreased, by 8%.
Income was quite uneven by region. While sales increases of over 10% were recorded in Japan (14.4%), Canada (12.6%) and EMEA (10.5%); the increases in China and Asia-Pacific without Japan and mainland China were 9.5% and 8.6%. In Latin America they fell by 0.9%, and in the United States, sales of this type of systems fell significantly: 9.9% year-on-year.
Dell Technologies remains the leader in external ESS sales, with a 22.7% revenue share. Huawei, more focused on basic products, has occupied second place in sales in the quarter, with a revenue increase of 12%, thanks to its sales in China. NetApp took third place, with a 9.4% share, and Pure Storage, with a 6.8% share, came fourth. HPE came in fifth position with a market share of 5.6%.
Juan SeminaraDResearch Director of Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers at IDChas highlighted from these data that «The penetration of AI applications and models into corporate data centers 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 inference«.
