Core Insights - The Chinese object storage industry is undergoing a strategic transition from a technical tool to a critical data infrastructure, becoming an essential foundation for artificial intelligence, big data, and digital transformation across various sectors [1][6] - The market size of the Chinese object storage industry is projected to reach approximately 4.435 billion yuan in 2024, representing a year-on-year growth of 34.03% [1][7] Industry Overview - Object storage is a storage architecture centered around unstructured data, encapsulating data as independent objects, each containing data, metadata, and a globally unique identifier [2] - Key characteristics include a flat storage structure, access via RESTful APIs, high scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness, making it suitable for massive unstructured data storage and management [2] Industry Value Chain - The upstream of the object storage industry includes raw materials like silicon wafers, electronic gases, and photolithography resins, as well as components such as storage media, processors, and data management software [4] - The midstream involves the production and manufacturing of object storage solutions, while the downstream applications span cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things [4] Market Size - The object storage industry is evolving into an "AI-ready data infrastructure," addressing the balance between high-performance data access needs and cost control for massive storage [1][6] - Leading solutions, such as those from XSKY, utilize intelligent tiering technology for dynamic data management, optimizing storage costs while ensuring efficiency for AI tasks [1][6] Key Companies - The industry exhibits a "head concentration, diversified competition" pattern, with major players like Huawei, Alibaba Cloud, and Tencent Cloud leveraging ecosystem advantages and pricing strategies [7] - Shenzhen Sandstone Data Technology Co., Ltd. focuses on software-defined storage innovations, supporting EB-level capacity and serving over 800 industry clients [8] - Tencent Cloud's object storage (COS) utilizes a self-developed YottaStore engine, achieving high data availability and durability, and has reported a revenue of 557.4 billion yuan for the first three quarters of 2025, with a year-on-year growth of 14.26% [8] Industry Development Trends 1. **Technological Evolution**: Object storage is transitioning from passive data storage to active data utilization, driven by AI model training and inference, focusing on performance optimization and intelligent data management [9] 2. **Market Restructuring**: The industry is moving away from price competition to value competition, with major players building ecological barriers through AI value-added services [9] 3. **Ecosystem Expansion**: Object storage is integrating with big data, AIoT, and data marketization, with a trend towards domestic substitution and support for local hardware platforms [10]