According to industry insiders on Sunday, South Korea's Samsung Electronics is expected to regain its position as the world's number one DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) market revenue leader in the fourth quarter of this year, surpassing its domestic rival SK Hynix .
Industry insiders say Samsung is expected to achieve an operating profit of over 18 trillion won (about US$12.2 billion) during the October-December period, exceeding market expectations.
Samsung's subsidiary responsible for DRAM, NAND flash memory, and system semiconductors The device solutions division is expected to be the main driver of this growth. The department is expected to contribute 15.1 trillion won in operating profit, a 166% increase from the previous quarter and a significant 422% increase from the same period last year .
With this better-than-expected profit performance, Samsung is expected to rank first in global DRAM supplier revenue in the fourth quarter, pushing SK Hynix to second place.
Industry analysts point out that Samsung has recently been focusing on high-bandwidth memory. (HBM) is striving to narrow the technological gap with its competitors, while data centers Artificial intelligence Infrastructure investment drove up the price of traditional DRAM products, and these two factors combined boosted its performance.
memory chip The battle for supremacy is intensifying.
The shifts in DRAM market rankings signal intensifying competition in the memory chip sector. Samsung, which had held the top spot in the DRAM market for 33 consecutive years, was overtaken by SK Hynix for the first time in the first quarter of this year, losing its leading position. This decline is primarily attributed to Samsung falling behind its competitors in the HBM chip segment.
SK Hynix became the world’s first company to develop HBM chips in 2013 and has since dominated the global HBM market.
DRAM is currently the most widely used volatile semiconductor memory chip in the world. As the core operating memory of electronic devices, DRAM enables high-speed random access to data and is widely used in servers, mobile phones, PCs, and other scenarios requiring high-speed data processing.
HBM is a high-performance DRAM based on 3D stacking technology and is a core component for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. With the explosive growth of the AI industry, its demand is also growing rapidly.
In the second and third quarters of this year, Samsung's DRAM revenue again lagged behind SK Hynix. However, it is worth noting that as Samsung accelerated HBM production and stabilized yield rates, the gap between it and SK Hynix narrowed in the third quarter.
According to data released by industry tracking firm Omdia at the end of last month, global DRAM sales surged by 30% quarter-on-quarter in the third quarter (July-September) due to rising prices, with SK Hynix maintaining its top position for the third consecutive quarter. Samsung Electronics and Micron ranked second and third, respectively.
Based on sales revenue, SK Hynix's global DRAM market share in the third quarter was 34.1%, a decrease of 5.3 percentage points from 39.4% in the previous quarter. Samsung Electronics' market share was 33.7% in the same quarter, an increase of 0.5 percentage points from 33.2% in the previous quarter. The market share gap between the two companies narrowed from 6.2 percentage points to 0.4 percentage points.
(Article source: CLS)
