SK Hynix Up
SK Hynix snatched second place from Micron Technology in the global DRAM market in the first quarter of this year, since its factory in Wuxi, China is now back to full operation. The firm is also expected to recapture the third spot in the global NAND flash memory market.
According to semiconductor e-commerce site DRAMeXchange on May 14, SK Hynix reported US$2.8 billion in DRAM sales in Q1 2014, up 20.8 percent from the previous quarter, when its facility in Wuxi was yet to be normalized. Its market share climbed 4.4 percent quarter-on-quarter to reach 28.2 percent in Q1. As a result, the Korean chip-maker outperformed Micron (US$2.785 billion, 28.0 percent) by a narrow margin.
Experts are saying that the normalization of the plant in Wuxi and the conversion into nano micro-processing contributed to the firm’s improved performance. SK Hynix was ahead of Micron until the third quarter of 2013, but the Korean company lost its runner-up spot in the market following a massive fire at its factory in Wuxi in last September.
SK Hynix is likely to overtake Micron in the global NAND flash market. The Korean firm accounted for 13.7 percent of the market in the third quarter of last year, which placed the company in the 3rd position by narrowly beating the US-based semiconductor company (13.5 percent). Nevertheless, its market share plunged by 17.3 percent after the fire. Thus, Micron unseated SK Hynix to become the world’s third-largest NAND flash memory chipmaker in the fourth quarter of 2013.
Samsung Electronics was the world’s number one seller of computer memory and NAND flash memory chips, improving Korea’s international status as a powerful nation in the semiconductor memory industry. The tech giant made up 35.5 percent of the DRAM market with US$3.528 billion in sales, and posted US$2.4579 billion in NAND flash sales in the fourth quarter of last year with a 39.8 percent share.
As a result, two Korean chipmakers’ share of the DRAM market amounted to 65.0 percent. These firms are also expected to represent more than half of the NAND flash market.