South Korea Data Center Storage Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends & Forecasts (2025 - 2030)

South Korea Data Center Storage Market Report Segments the Industry Into Storage Technology (Network Attached Storage (NAS), Storage Area Network (SAN) and More), Storage Type (Traditional Storage, and More), Data Center Type (Colocation Facilities and More), Form Factor(Rack-Mounted and More), Interface(sas / SATA, and More)and End User (IT & Telecommunication, and More). The Market Forecasts are Provided in Terms of Value (USD).

South Korea Data Center Storage Market Size and Share

South Korea Data Center Storage Market Summary
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Compare market size and growth of South Korea Data Center Storage Market with other markets in Technology, Media and Telecom Industry

South Korea Data Center Storage Market Analysis by Mordor Intelligence

South Korea data center storage market value stood at USD 1.23 billion in 2025 and, supported by an 11.61% CAGR, is forecast to reach USD 2.13 billion by 2030. Escalating AI and hyperscale workloads, a far-reaching semiconductor investment program, and the government’s Cloud-First Policy are together redefining storage architecture choices for enterprises and cloud providers bloomberg.com. Strength in domestic NAND manufacturing lets Korean vendors roll out higher-density flash earlier than foreign peers, compressing cost per terabyte and nudging buyers toward all-flash and NVMe configurations. At the same time, power-grid bottlenecks around Seoul and stricter Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) rules add both urgency and complexity to data-center site selection. Supply-chain volatility—enterprise SSD quotes rose 20–25% in 2024—compels CIOs to balance performance gains with CAPEX discipline even as AI model sizes balloo

Key Report Takeaways

  • By storage technology, Storage Area Network held 42.3% of South Korea data center storage market share in 2024, while object and tape storage is projected to expand at 13.2% CAGR to 2030
  • By storage type, legacy HDD arrays accounted for 46.9% share of the South Korea data center storage market size in 2024; all-flash arrays are advancing at a 14.4% CAGR through 2030.
  • By data-center type, colocation facilities led with 54.6% revenue share in 2024; hyperscaler and cloud-service deployments record the fastest 17.5% CAGR to 2030.
  • By end user, IT & telecommunications captured 37.2% of South Korea data center storage market share in 2024, while healthcare & life sciences show a 14.8% CAGR through 2030.
  • By form factor, rack-mounted systems dominated with 56.2% share in 2024; disaggregated and composable storage is forecast to climb 16.4% CAGR to 2030.

Segment Analysis

By Storage Technology: SAN Dominance Faces Object-Storage Disruption

SAN retained a 42.3% slice of South Korea data center storage market in 2024 because mission-critical financial and telecom workloads still favor deterministic latency delivered by Fibre Channel fabrics. The arrival of 400-layer V-NAND lets array makers ship petabyte shelves that slot into existing rack plans without undue power hits, a feature that keeps SAN in the conversation for stateful containers and virtual-machine farms. In contrast, hyperscalers bulk-order erasure-coded object repositories to feed transformer models, driving a 13.2% CAGR for that class through 2030. Because model checkpoints and training corpora live longest, operators gravitate to low-cost cold tiers—often HDD or tape fronted by SSD caches—to stretch TCO windows. 

Object storage also gains ground inside regulated enterprises that now run analytics on click-stream and IoT exhaust deferred from performance tiers. Naver’s GAK Sejong campus exemplifies the blend: flash-backed SAN for high-traffic search indices, object buckets for AI training and CDN origin. Samsung SDS seeds the same architecture inside its public cloud, promising near-line datasets at half per-terabyte cost relative to SAN. Given that supply chains sit mere kilometers from assembly plants in Gyeonggi, local integrators can prototype custom controllers faster than offshore rivals. Over the forecast horizon, hybrid deployments—SAN front-ends fused with object back-ends—will underpin data-lifecycle policies that temper cost spikes while keeping inference pipelines warm.

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Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By Storage Type: All-Flash Arrays Accelerate Despite Cost Pressures

Legacy HDD arrays still held 46.9% of South Korea data center storage market size in 2024 as cold-data lakes and compliance archives cling to spinning media economics. Yet, AI adoption patterns show that every GPU added compounds the need for sustained IOPS; hence, all-flash shipments chart a 14.4% CAGR to 2030. Samsung’s own elastic cloud service cut model-training epoch times 35% after swapping hybrid trays for QLC-based Pure Storage DirectFlash modules, validating energy TCO math even with premium SSD pricing. 

Flash momentum benefits from government carbon pledges: new data halls must show ≥40 % energy-use reduction versus 2022 baselines, and flash’s watt-per-TB edge helps meet those audits. The cost gap narrows as 4-bit QLC cells and 3D stacking climb past 400 layers, slashing dollars per gigabyte in domestic fabs. Hybrid arrays remain popular stopgaps, blending SATA HDD and NVMe cache where workloads show seasonal I/O spikes. Over time, intra-array tiering engines will quietly retire HDD trays, inching the ratio toward flash-heavy footprints by decade’s end.

By Data Center Type: Hyperscalers Drive Infrastructure Transformation

Colocation plants contributed 54.6% of invoiced revenue in 2024 because domestic enterprises still treat capex-light tenancy as default, and tax schemes reward wholesale leasing. Nevertheless, hyperscalers chart the steeper 17.5% CAGR; Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon rush to carve sovereign enclaves that meet Korean PIPA constraints while keeping network round-trip under 30 ms to Tokyo. South Korea data center storage market size tied to hyperscalers could surpass USD 1.1 billion by 2030 if the 3-GW Jeollanam-do build stays on schedule. 

Operators at that scale jettison monolithic frames in favor of open-rack and composable disaggregated storage pooled across liquid-cooled GPU aisles. Samsung SDS, LG CNS, and Megazone Cloud leverage local supply contracts to meet customization asks—NVMe-oF fabrics, air-sealed HDD pods, or tape silos with barium-ferrite media. Edge micro-sites pop up along 5G hubs where latency budgets dip below 5 ms for autonomous-vehicle telemetry; these deployments still favor direct-attached flash enclosures given cost and space constraints.

By End User: Healthcare Emerges as AI-Driven Growth Leader

IT-telecom customers continued to capture 37.2% of South Korea data center storage market share in 2024, anchoring bandwidth-hungry OTT video and 5G core workloads. Yet hospitals and genomics labs post the headline 14.8% CAGR, turbocharged by multi-modal imaging and large-language-model diagnostics. Seoul National University Hospital alone added 12 PB of flash-tier capacity in 2025 to house anonymized radiology scans for federated-learning pilots. 

Regulators clear cloud pathways for de-identified health data, nudging providers toward hybrid environments where sensitive patient identifiers remain on-prem while model artifacts live in compliant public regions. BFSI firms follow suit, mirroring zero-trust micro-segmentation that fences PII on flash-tier SAN while moving Monte Carlo risk archives to object cold tiers offshore. Collectively, vertical diversification insulates vendors from telecom investment cycles, ensuring broadened revenue streams.

By Form Factor: Disaggregated Architecture Gains Momentum

Rack-mount SKUs retained 56.2% bookings in 2024—brownfield retrofits still favor bolt-in rails—but disaggregated sleds jump 16.4% CAGR on hyperscale pull. Compute Express Link (CXL) and NVMe-oF let operators pool flash as a fungible fabric resource, translating to 30–40 % better drive utilization during model spin-ups. Samsung demoed CXL 2.0 composability at MemCon 2024, wiring 32 compute nodes to a shared 2 PB flash shelf over 256-lane PCIe 5.0, a topology now entering volume trials. 

Blade systems continue niche duty in government chassis where supplier lists lock spec; however, liquid-cool blocks and rear-door heat exchangers make high-density sleds safe even at 60 kW/rack, a must for AI racks at ICN10. Over the forecast horizon, software-defined orchestration stacks will abstract away physical form factors, but composability’s capex-lite scaling propels its share in new halls.

South Korea Data Center Storage Market
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Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By Interface: NVMe Adoption Accelerates for AI Workloads

SAS/SATA retained 47.3% interface mix in 2024 thanks to proven error-handling and hot-swap comfort among ops teams. But every PCIe generation doubles lane bandwidth, and NVMe-only designs jump 14.6% CAGR through 2030. Samsung’s 9100 PRO PCIe 5.0 NVMe 2.0 SSD hits 14 GB/s sequential reads, turning it into de-facto standard for GPU local scratch during transformer training. 

Fibre Channel shores up mainframe and trade-matching clusters needing deterministic lossless links, but its incremental roadmap stalls compared with PCIe. iSCSI lingers for departmental NAS oversubscribed on 25 GbE topologies. Looking ahead, NVMe-TCP and NVMe-RoCE overlays will blur block vs. file semantics, giving developers a uniform API across tiers and sites.

Geography Analysis

South Korea data center storage market skews heavily to the Seoul–Incheon corridor where financial exchanges, telco cores, and IX hubs cluster. Colocation landlords there report 92 % occupancy, leaving land and megawatt premiums that nudge greenfield builds to Sejong or Pyeongtaek. Naver’s GAK Sejong campus spans 294,000 m² and anchors 65 EB of capacity, signalling how secondary cities scale once grid hooks and dark-fiber routes firm up.

Jeollanam-do’s USD 35 billion, 3-GW AI campus will tilt gravity southwards by 2028 and could alone lift local South Korea data center storage market size by USD 420 million under steady-state replacement cycles. Regional planners sweeten land grants and nuclear baseload guarantees to offset metro latency penalties, while KEPCO works 765-kV backbones into coastal zones. Along the Yellow Sea, Songdo’s smart-city grid embeds Rittal micro-data centers at intersections, each hosting 120 TB for traffic lidar and CCTV retention.

Cross-border data-flow friction influences siting: new PIPA amendments demand that residency exceptions undergo quarterly privacy audits, so overseas SaaS firms lean on local sovereign AZs with transparent key-management. Subsea cable backhauls to Los Angeles and Singapore remain robust, yet enterprise architects now adopt multi-region active-active patterns that keep user PII pinned to Korea even as stateless micro-services roam, a nuance that benefits domestic cloud operators.

Competitive Landscape

Market rivalry intensifies as global OEMs square off against vertically integrated Korean memory giants. Samsung and SK Hynix not only fab NAND and DRAM but increasingly bundle controllers and firmware, letting them tweak QoS profiles for AI inference far faster than Dell Technologies or HPE can iterate. The top five vendors jointly accounted for roughly 62 % of 2024 revenue, a position that still leaves room for disruptors in composable fabrics and edge arrays. 

Domestic integrators enjoy favorite-supplier status on government cloud migration lots: Samsung SDS grew cloud segment revenue 35.3 % YoY in Q3 2024 on the back of Digital Platform Government deals. Megazone Cloud eyes a USD 7 billion IPO to bankroll more sovereign AZs, putting pressure on global CSPs to localize services and bid with local SI partners. Meanwhile, Pure Storage opened a Seoul R&D pod and licensed SK Hynix QLC dies, tightening symbiotic ties between foreign system IP and Korean silicon roadmaps. 

White-space plays center on AI-specific storage appliances that ingest PB-scale datasets into GPU superpods without network oversubscription. Penguin Solutions used SK Telecom’s USD 200 million equity to co-design such appliances around 800 GbE fabrics, carving a niche against mainstream OEMs. Software-defined entrants like VAST Data and Weka line up channel pacts with LG CNS to complement hardware incumbents, ensuring a fragmented yet innovation-heavy field.

South Korea Data Center Storage Industry Leaders

  1. Dell Inc.

  2. Hewlett Packard Enterprise

  3. NetApp Inc.

  4. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

  5. Hitachi Vantara LLC

  6. *Disclaimer: Major Players sorted in no particular order
South Korea Data Center Storage Market Concentration
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Recent Industry Developments

  • May 2025: Pure Storage and SK Hynix announced a strategic partnership to co-develop QLC flash modules for hyperscale AI clusters, pairing SK Hynix 232-layer QLC with DirectFlash software.
  • May 2025: SK Hynix unveiled next-generation AI server memory at DTW 2025, spotlighting stacked High-Bandwidth Memory and flash-based cache tiers for lower inference latency.
  • February 2025: Stock Farm Road group inked a USD 35 billion MOU to build a 3-GW AI data center in Jeollanam-do, targeting 2028 hand-over.
  • January 2025: Penguin Solutions, SK Telecom, and SK Hynix formed a tripartite venture to ship integrated AI data-center racks worldwide.
  • January 2025: Penguin Solutions, SK Telecom, and SK Hynix formed a tripartite venture to ship integrated AI data-center racks worldwide.
  • December 2024: Samsung began mass production of 321-layer 3D NAND, doubling density versus previous nodes.
  • November 2024: Samsung teamed with Korea Southeast Power on a hydrogen-fueled data center prototype to cut grid draw and Scope 2 emissions.

Table of Contents for South Korea Data Center Storage Industry Report

1. INTRODUCTION

  • 1.1 Study Assumptions and Market Definition
  • 1.2 Scope of the Study

2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4. MARKET LANDSCAPE

  • 4.1 Market Overview
  • 4.2 Market Drivers
    • 4.2.1 Expansion of IT infrastructure
    • 4.2.2 Increased hyperscale data-center investment
    • 4.2.3 Rapid shift to all-flash arrays
    • 4.2.4 AI/ML and big-data workload boom
    • 4.2.5 Nuclear-renewable power mix securing capacity
    • 4.2.6 Rise of edge micro-data centers in smart-city roll-outs
  • 4.3 Market Restraints
    • 4.3.1 High upfront CAPEX for enterprise arrays
    • 4.3.2 Grid-level power-supply constraints
    • 4.3.3 Tightening Korean data-sovereignty laws
    • 4.3.4 Volatile NAND/DRAM price cycles
  • 4.4 Value/Supply-Chain Analysis
  • 4.5 Regulatory Landscape
  • 4.6 Technological Outlook (NVMe-oF, CXL, QLC)
  • 4.7 Porter's Five Forces
    • 4.7.1 Threat of New Entrants
    • 4.7.2 Bargaining Power of Buyers
    • 4.7.3 Bargaining Power of Suppliers
    • 4.7.4 Threat of Substitutes
    • 4.7.5 Intensity of Competitive Rivalry
  • 4.8 Assessment of the impact of Macro Economic Trends on the Market

5. Market Size and Growth Forecasts (Value)

  • 5.1 By Storage Technology
    • 5.1.1 Network Attached Storage (NAS)
    • 5.1.2 Storage Area Network (SAN)
    • 5.1.3 Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
    • 5.1.4 Object and Tape Storage
  • 5.2 By Storage Type
    • 5.2.1 Traditional HDD Arrays
    • 5.2.2 All-Flash Arrays (AFA)
    • 5.2.3 Hybrid Storage
  • 5.3 By Data Center Type
    • 5.3.1 Colocation Facilities
    • 5.3.2 Hyperscalers/Cloud Service Providers
    • 5.3.3 Enterprise and Edge
  • 5.4 By End User
    • 5.4.1 IT and Telecommunication
    • 5.4.2 BFSI
    • 5.4.3 Government and Public Sector
    • 5.4.4 Media and Entertainment
    • 5.4.5 Healthcare and Life Sciences
    • 5.4.6 Manufacturing
  • 5.5 By Form Factor
    • 5.5.1 Rack-mounted
    • 5.5.2 Blade and Modular
    • 5.5.3 Disaggregated / Composable
  • 5.6 By Interface
    • 5.6.1 SAS / SATA
    • 5.6.2 NVMe
    • 5.6.3 Fibre Channel and iSCSI

6. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

  • 6.1 Market Concentration
  • 6.2 Strategic Moves
  • 6.3 Market Share Analysis
  • 6.4 Company Profiles (includes Global level overview, market level overview, core segments, financials, strategic information, market rank/share, products and services, and recent developments)
    • 6.4.1 Dell Technologies Inc.
    • 6.4.2 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company
    • 6.4.3 NetApp, Inc.
    • 6.4.4 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
    • 6.4.5 Hitachi Vantara LLC
    • 6.4.6 Pure Storage, Inc.
    • 6.4.7 Lenovo Group Limited
    • 6.4.8 Fujitsu Limited
    • 6.4.9 Oracle Corporation
    • 6.4.10 Seagate Technology Holdings plc
    • 6.4.11 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
    • 6.4.12 SK hynix Inc.
    • 6.4.13 LG CNS Co., Ltd.
    • 6.4.14 Samsung SDS Co., Ltd.
    • 6.4.15 Bespin Global Inc.
    • 6.4.16 Megazone Cloud Corp.
    • 6.4.17 Hyosung Information Systems Co., Ltd.
    • 6.4.18 Western Digital Corporation
    • 6.4.19 IBM Corporation
    • 6.4.20 Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd.

7. MARKET OPPORTUNITIES and FUTURE OUTLOOK

  • 7.1 White-space and Unmet-Need Assessment
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South Korea Data Center Storage Market Report Scope

Data center storage refers to the devices, hardware, networking equipment, and software technologies that enable the storage of data and applications within data center facilities. It is used to store, manage, retrieve, distribute, and back up digital information within data center facilities.

The South Korean Data Center Storage Market is segmented by Storage Technology (Network Attached Storage (NAS), Storage Area Network (SAN), and Direct Attached Storage (DAS)), by Storage Type (Traditional Storage, All-Flash Storage, and Hybrid Storage), by End Users (IT & Telecommunication, BFSI, Government, Media & Entertainment, and Other End Users). The market sizes and forecasts are provided in terms of value (USD) for all the above segments.

By Storage Technology Network Attached Storage (NAS)
Storage Area Network (SAN)
Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
Object and Tape Storage
By Storage Type Traditional HDD Arrays
All-Flash Arrays (AFA)
Hybrid Storage
By Data Center Type Colocation Facilities
Hyperscalers/Cloud Service Providers
Enterprise and Edge
By End User IT and Telecommunication
BFSI
Government and Public Sector
Media and Entertainment
Healthcare and Life Sciences
Manufacturing
By Form Factor Rack-mounted
Blade and Modular
Disaggregated / Composable
By Interface SAS / SATA
NVMe
Fibre Channel and iSCSI
By Storage Technology
Network Attached Storage (NAS)
Storage Area Network (SAN)
Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
Object and Tape Storage
By Storage Type
Traditional HDD Arrays
All-Flash Arrays (AFA)
Hybrid Storage
By Data Center Type
Colocation Facilities
Hyperscalers/Cloud Service Providers
Enterprise and Edge
By End User
IT and Telecommunication
BFSI
Government and Public Sector
Media and Entertainment
Healthcare and Life Sciences
Manufacturing
By Form Factor
Rack-mounted
Blade and Modular
Disaggregated / Composable
By Interface
SAS / SATA
NVMe
Fibre Channel and iSCSI
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Key Questions Answered in the Report

What is the South Korea data center storage market size in 2025?

The market is valued at USD 1.23 billion in 2025.

What compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is forecast for 2025-2030?

The market is projected to expand at an 11.61% CAGR through 2030.

Who are the key players in South Korea Data Center Storage Market?

Dell Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp Inc., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Hitachi Vantara LLC are the major companies operating in the South Korea Data Center Storage Market.

Which storage type is growing the fastest?

All-flash arrays lead with a 14.4% CAGR as enterprises prioritize low-latency AI workloads.

Why are hyperscale operators investing heavily in South Korea?

Sovereign-AI requirements, a USD 35 billion 3 GW campus in Jeollanam-do, and government Cloud-First incentives make the country a strategic hub for Asia-Pacific deployments.

Which end-user vertical shows the highest growth momentum?

Healthcare and life sciences, driven by AI imaging and medical large-language-model projects, posts a 14.8% CAGR.

What key restraints could slow market expansion?

High upfront CAPEX for flash arrays and grid-level power constraints around Seoul reduce near-term deployment velocity.

Page last updated on: June 22, 2025

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