According to International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, global market revenue for enterprise external OEM storage systems declined 2.1% year over year to $7.8 billion during Q4/20. Total external OEM storage capacity shipped was up 11.3% year over year to 23.8 exabytes during the quarter.

Revenue generated by the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale datacenters grew 2% year over year to $6.6 billion in Q4/20, while capacity shipped grew by 7.6% year over year to 76 exabytes. Total capacity shipments for the market (external OEM plus ODM direct plus server-based storage) increased 8.3% to 135.1 exabytes.

“The external storage system market contracted for the fourth consecutive quarter in [Q4/20], down 2.1% year over year, as the market for the full year 2020 closed out with a 4% decline,” Greg Macatee, research analyst for the infrastructure platforms and technologies group at IDC, said. “Geographically, the lone region to experience growth during the quarter was China (PRC), which grew nearly 30% year over year and was bolstered by strong performances from a series of locally headquartered vendors. Another of the overall enterprise storage systems market bright spots was the ODM direct segment, which grew this quarter at a rate of 2% annually.”

Dell Technologies was the largest external enterprise storage systems supplier during the quarter, followed by HPE/New H3C Groupb. Huawei, NetApp and IBM took the third, fourth and fifth positions in the market, respectively.

The total all flash array (AFA) market generated $3 billion in revenue during the quarter, down 6.9% year over year. The hybrid flash array (HFA) market was worth nearly $3.2 billion in revenue, increasing 5.8% from the year-ago quarter.

On a geographic basis, storage revenue in PRC grew 28% year over year. EMEA declined 2.4% and Japan declined 7.8% year over year, while Canada and the United States fell 8.7% and 10.1%, respectively. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and PRC) also contracted 14.4% annually and Latin America fell 18.3%.