New Record
Korean chip makers renewed the highest market share record by breaking through a 93 percent market share in the mobile DRAM market. DRAM Exchange, a semiconductor trading website, said on Nov. 8 that in the third-quarter mobile DRAM market, Samsung Electronics came in first with a 56.9 percent market share, followed by SK Hynix (26.4 percent) and Micron Group of the U.S. (15.3 percent). Nanya and Winwood, both of which are Taiwanese companies, sat fourth and fifth by chalking up 0.9 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.
The combined market share of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix reached 83.3 percent, a rise of 1.8 percent from 81.5 percent in the second quarter. The percentage surpassed 80 percent, an overwhelming market share, breaking through the highest market share record for two quarters in a row.
In terms of sales, Samsung Electronics’ US$2.586 billion and SK Hynix’s 1.2 billion are the highest figures since DRAM Exchange began to independently count DRAM sales. In particular, sales of second-ranked SK Hynix and sales of the third-ranked Micron Group widened to 11.1 percentage points.
This is the first time for SK Hynix to expand the gap by more than ten percentage points since the Micron Group took over Elpida of Japan in the third quarter of 2013. This is because SK Hynix recorded a sales increase of a whopping 30.5 percent.
While Samsung Electronics and the Micron Group inked sales increases of 16.5 percent and 9.2 percent, respectively, SK Hynix enjoyed a surge in sales with its sales growth rate doubled or tripled compared its competitors. This means that SK Hynix enjoyed a sharp rise in sales in the mobile DRAM market after Samsung Electronics chalked up a 45.2 percent market share in the entire DRAM market in the second quarter, setting a new record of the highest sales.
“In 2007, mobile DRAM sales accounted for only about three percent of all DRAM sales. But we have maintained mobile DRAM sales at 30 percent since 2012,” said a representative at SK Hynix. “In the third quarter of 2015, we scaled up the proportion to the second half of the 30 to 40 percent level. We will expand sales of premium products so that mobile DRAM sales will account for more than 40 percent of our DRAM product sales.”