IDC says the worldwide server market hit a new high in Q3 2025, pulling in $112.4 billion in revenue — a 61% jump year over year — as demand for AI infrastructure and accelerated compute kept spending in overdrive.
AI infrastructure is reshaping server buying
The headline number masks a market that’s splitting into two very different growth stories. x86 server revenue rose 32.8% to $76.3 billion, while non-x86 systems surged 192.7% to $36.2 billion, reflecting how aggressively some buyers are chasing alternative architectures for dense AI workloads.
One of the clearest signals of that shift: IDC reports that servers with an embedded GPU now represent more than half of total server-market revenue, after growing 49.4% year over year in the quarter.
IDC also says the market has “almost doubled” compared with 2024, reaching $314.2 billion in revenue across the first three quarters of 2025.
The US leads growth, with hyperscalers out front
Regionally, the United States was the fastest-growing server market in Q3, up 79.1% year over year, fueled by a 105.5% jump in the accelerated server segment. Canada followed with 69.8% growth, while China (PRC) rose 37.6% and accounted for “almost a fifth” of global quarterly revenue, according to IDC.
Elsewhere, IDC reports strong double-digit gains across Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) at 37.4%, EMEA at 31.0%, and Japan at 28.1%. Latin America trailed with 4.1% growth.
Vendor standings: Dell leads OEMs — but ODM Direct dominates overall
Among OEMs, IDC puts Dell Technologies in the top spot with an 8.3% revenue share in Q3 2025. Supermicro is second at 4.0% (down 13.2% year over year), while IEIT Systems (3.7%) and Lenovo (3.6%) are statistically tied for third. HPE rounds out the top five at 3.0%.
The bigger structural story is how much of the market is being pulled by hyperscalers’ supply chains: IDC shows ODM Direct at 59.4% of worldwide server revenue in the quarter, up 112.2% year over year.
Storage, by contrast, is growing — but at a crawl
IDC’s companion tracker paints a far calmer picture for enterprise storage. The external OEM enterprise storage systems (ESS) market grew 2.1% year over year in Q3 2025, reaching $8.0 billion in vendor revenue.
Under the surface, however, the mix continues to tilt toward flash. All-flash array revenue grew 17.6%, while hybrid flash and HDD arrays fell 9.8% and 6.3%, respectively.
Midrange storage is doing the heavy lifting
IDC says the fastest-growing price band was midrange storage ($25K–$250K), up 8.1% in Q3 — and now representing 67.5% of the total external storage market. Meanwhile, high-end systems (>$250K) declined 9.0%, and entry-level systems (<$25K) fell 8.0%.
Regional results were mixed: Japan (+14.4%), Canada (+12.6%), and EMEA (+10.5%) posted double-digit gains, while China (PRC) grew 9.5% and APeJC grew 8.6%. Latin America dipped 0.9%, and the US fell 9.9% year over year, which IDC attributes to a weak quarter for OEMs.
Storage vendors: Dell stays #1, Huawei #2, Pure grows fastest in the top five
IDC keeps Dell in the top spot for external storage with a 22.7% revenue share, though revenue fell 4.9% year over year. Huawei is second with 12.0% share and 9.5% growth, followed by NetApp (9.4% share, +2.8%), Pure Storage (6.8% share, +15.5%), and HPE (5.6% share, -7.5%).
The takeaway: servers are absorbing the AI budget
Taken together, IDC’s numbers highlight a widening gap inside the datacenter budget. AI-driven, accelerated servers are soaking up capital at a historic pace — while external enterprise storage grows more cautiously, even as flash continues to take share.