The latest enterprise storage market tracker from International Data Corp. (IDC) shows that Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) has done extremely well, bucking a trend that saw the wider market decline, with ODM supply to hyperscalers also on a downward spiral.

Overall, the enterprise storage market was worth $8.2 billion for Q1 of 2016, IDC said, a seven percent decline from one year ago.

HPE was alone among the top six vendors in that it actually managed to grow its storage revenues compared to the same quarter one year ago, while everyone else’s declined. HPE’s $1.42 billion revenues, up a massive 11 percent year-over-year, gives it an ever-so-slight lead over second place EMC Corp., which garnered $1.35 billion in storage revenues, an 11.8 percent decline from one year ago.

HPE could be forgiven for patting itself on the back, and indeed it has done just that. In its most recent earnings report, the company said its storage momentum was carrying through into the second quarter, as it recorded growth of two percent compared to the year before. HPE CEO Meg Whitman also said 3PAR all-flash revenue had nearly doubled in the quarter, compared to last year.

“We estimate that we gained market share in the external disk for the tenth consecutive quarter and expect storage to gain shares throughout the remainder of the year on the strength of the 3PAR portfolio and new logo wins as we take advantage of the uncertainties surrounding the Dell-EMC merger,” Whitman said on HPE’s earnings call last month.

As for the rest, Dell Inc. maintained its third place with revenues of $845.5 million, though this was down 5.8 percent from one year ago. NetApp Inc. came in fourth with $645.5 million, down a worrying 15.6 percent from one year ago. If Dell and EMC’s merger had already been completed it would’ve came out on top of course, with combined revenues of $2.27 billion almost double those of HPE’s, and nearly three times more than NetApp could muster. In fact, so big would the combined Dell/EMC revenues be that it almost matches those of the “Others” category, which pulled in $2.28 billion for the quarter, up 5.3 percent from a year ago.

“Spending on server-based storage was up, spending on traditional external arrays continues to decline, while the nature of hyperscale business leads it to fluctuate heavily with that market segment seeing a heavy decline in 1Q16,” said Liz Conner, research manager of Storage Systems at IDC.

IDC didn’t offer any explanation for EMC’s or NetApp’s rapid decline, but it seems likely that price cuts were a factor as legacy vendors struggled to repel the new hybrid arrays and all-flash products from startups.

Rounding out the top five were Hitachi Ltd., and IBM, both of whom were down year-on-year.

IDC also noted that total all-flash array market pulled in $794.8 million in revenues during Q1, a massive 87.4 percent jump from one year ago. Meanwhile, hybrid flash arrays pulled in $2.2 billion in revenues, grabbing a 26.5 percent share of the overall market.

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