What are the Historical Developments and Current Growth Metrics of the External Storage Market?
The external storage market has seen considerable growth due to a variety of factors.
• The market size of external storage has seen a significant upsurge in recent times. The forecast indicates a jump from $40.44 billion in 2024 to $46.05 billion in 2025, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.9%.
This progress during the historical period can be credited to factors such as an increase in data production, the rise of cloud-based services, growth of digital media and entertainment, the surge of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and an amplified emphasis on data backup.
What is the Forecasted Market Size and CAGR for the External Storage Market?
The external storage market is expected to maintain its strong growth trajectory in upcoming years.
• The market size of external storage is anticipated to experience a swift expansion in the following years, reaching a valuation of $74.06 billion in 2029, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.6%.
The forecast period's growth can be ascribed to the ongoing surge in data propagation, the escalating need for remote working solutions, a heightened focus on cybersecurity measures, increased uptake of 4k and 8k content and the growing application of edge computing. Key trends that mark the forecast period encompass the growth of network-attached storage (NAS), the uptake of solid-state drives (SSDs), the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) for intelligent storage, the evolving part of edge computing, and the emergence of sustainable and environmentally conscious storage solutions.
What Key Factors and Trends Are Driving The Growth External Storage Market?
The escalating need for data storage is predicted to fuel the expansion of the external storage market. Data storage encompasses the preservation of files, folders, or other digital data on a storage medium or system in a format that facilitates ease of access in the future. The burgeoning need for data spurs greater adoption of external storage given its advantages like increased capacity, data backup, portability, and suitability for media and specialized applications, alongside collaboration requirements across various devices and sectors. To illustrate, a report by The Linux Foundation, a US-based non-profit consortium, revealed that an average end-user organization with a storage capacity totalling 20 petabytes witnessed an annual data growth of 566 terabytes in 2021 and rose to 1,746 terabytes in 2022. Furthermore, organizations with a storage capacity of up to 25 petabytes saw their annual data growth balloon to a significant 2,208 terabytes in 2022, marking a 215.43% rise or threefold from the 700 terabytes recorded in 2021. Hence, the mounting demand for data storage is set to catalyse the growth of the external storage market. The burgeoning number of enterprises is forecasted to stimulate the growth of the external storage market. An enterprise, mainly a business entity, is an organization that holds the power to run business operations autonomously through contract signing, property ownership, debt accumulation, and operating bank accounts. In these enterprises, external storage serves as either the primary storage linked to servers via Ethernet or fiber channel switches or the secondary storage for backup and archiving needs. To exemplify, a report from Startups.co.uk, a UK-based online resource and advisory platform, disclosed that the number of newly established businesses spiked by 19.5% in 2023, totalling 39,966 businesses. This surge also equates to a 6.5% rise when compared to the corresponding period in 2022. Therefore, the growth in enterprise numbers is set to spur the expansion of the external storage market.
What Are The Market Segments In The External Storage Market?
The external storage market covered in this report is segmented –
1) By Storage Type: Optical Storage, Solid-State Storage Devices, Flash Storage Devices, External Hard Drives, Other Storage Type
2) By Interface: Universal Serial Bus (USB), Thunderbolt, External SATA (eSATA), Firewire
3) By Capacity: Up To 1 TB, 1TB To 100 TB, Above 100 TB
4) By Application: Consumer Electronics, Healthcare Devices, Automotive Application, Enterprise Storage, Industrial Applications, Other Applications
Subsegments:
1) By Optical Storage: CDs (Compact Discs), DVDs (Digital Versatile Discs), Blu-ray Discs
2) By Solid-State Storage Devices: SATA SSDs (Serial ATA Solid-State Drives), NVMe SSDs (Non-Volatile Memory Express Solid-State Drives)
3) By Flash Storage Devices: USB Flash Drives, Memory Cards
4) By External Hard Drives: Portable External Hard Drives, Desktop External Hard Drives
5) By Other Storage Type: Hybrid Drives, Network-Attached Storage (NAS) Devices
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What Trends Are Shaping The External Storage Market?
Major corporations in the external storage market, including Micron Technology Inc., are prioritizing the development of advanced technology solutions such as NAND flash memory to gain a market advantage. NAND flash memory, a persistent memory technology, continues to hold data even when power is off and is a fundamental component of many electronic devices such as smartphones, laptops, data centers, and enterprise storage system. Micron Technology Inc. launched the 7450 Solid State Drive (SSD) based on 176-layer 3D NAND technology in March 2022. The product offers a broad capacity range from 400 GB to 15.36 TB, adaptable to various needs in data centers. Additionally, it provides steady and even latencies under two milliseconds, which is key to ensuring quality service delivery for sophisticated data center workloads.
Who Are the Key Players In The External Storage Market?
Major companies operating in the external storage market report are:
• Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Dell Technologies Inc.
• Lenovo Group Limited
• International Business Machines Corporation
• Oracle Corporation
• SK Hynix Inc.
• Fujitsu Ltd.
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP
• Toshiba Corporation
• Micron Technology Inc.
• Western Digital Corporation
• Seagate Technology LLC
• Kingston Technology Company Inc.
• NetApp Inc.
• Hitachi Vantara LLC
• Pure Storage Inc.
• SanDisk Ltd.
• ADATA Technology Co. Ltd.
• Transcend Information Inc.
• Quantum Corporation
• QNAP Systems Inc.
• Synology Inc.
• LaCie
• Infortrend Technology Inc.
• Promise Technology Inc.
• Zoolz
• Thecus Technology Corp.
• pCloud International AG
• ID Cloud Services Ltd.
• Koofr d.o.o.
What Are The Regional Insights Into The External Storage Market?
North America was the largest region in the external storage market in 2024. The regions covered in the external storage market report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East, Africa
