IDC ranks the top five global external enterprise storage suppliers for Q1 2026 as Dell, NetApp, Everpure, Huawei and HPE, in order.Per IDC’s 1Q26 Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems (ESS) Tracker, the enterprise storage market saw strong quarterly acceleration, hitting $9.2 billion in vendor revenue, a 22.7% year-over-year increase. Growth is fueled by booming AI infrastructure demand, long-deferred storage refresh cycles, and rising NAND and DRAM component prices.
Juan Seminara, IDC Research Director for Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers, noted Q1 2026 marks a key market turning point. After two years lagging behind server and AI compute spending, enterprise storage has returned to robust double-digit growth.
He stated the confluence of delayed infrastructure refreshes, climbing component costs, and AI-driven storage demand across model training, inference and unstructured data activation has unlocked the market’s strongest growth phase in years. All Flash Arrays (AFA) have surpassed 50% of total storage revenue, signaling a fundamental enterprise shift toward AI-optimized data infrastructure.
Among the top vendors, Dell delivered broad portfolio growth driven by its AI storage attach strategy. NetApp took second place on the back of expanding all-flash sales and cloud-integrated data management. Everpure rose to third position thanks to rising subscription adoption and AI-optimized storage platforms.
IDC data shows the full-year 2025 external ESS market reached $33.0 billion, up 3.9% YoY. The sharp Q1 2026 growth surge confirms a lasting market shift, with AI infrastructure storage emerging as the core growth driver.
For two years, enterprise investment prioritized servers and GPUs, overshadowing storage spending. Now two key tailwinds lift the market: enterprises resuming delayed storage refreshes, and new AI workload demand spanning training, inference and unstructured data processing. Storage has become a critical AI deployment bottleneck, with leading vendors posting record or near-record revenue tied directly to AI workloads. AI-focused all-flash systems optimized for GPU-storage bandwidth are among the market’s fastest-growing products.
Rising SSD, HDD and DRAM prices lifted average system selling prices quarter-over-quarter. IDC expects pricing pressure to continue through 2027, easing only after new semiconductor fabrication capacity comes online.
Key segment metrics for Q1 2026 include:
All Flash Arrays (AFA): $4.9 billion revenue (+32.7% YoY), accounting for 52.6% of total ESS market revenue, crossing the 50% threshold for the first time.
Hybrid Flash Arrays (HFA): $3.5 billion (+14.0% YoY), holding a 37.8% market share.
All HDD Arrays: $0.9 billion (+10.2% YoY), with a 9.6% share.
High-end systems ($250K+ ASP): Surged 60.7% YoY to $2.4 billion (25.5% market share), driven by large-scale AI deployments and deferred upgrades.
Midrange systems ($25K–$250K): Grew 17.3% YoY to $5.9 billion, dominating 64.4% of the market.
Entry-level systems (<$25K): Declined 6.1% YoY to $0.9 billion (9.6% share).
Geographically, the U.S. led global growth, rising 30.4% YoY to $3.95 billion and claiming a 42.8% market share. The fastest-growing regions were Central
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