[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] Samsung Electronics is expected to expand its market share in the rapidly growing enterprise server solid-state drive (SSD) market, surpassing a 50% market share in North America during the third quarter. As it broadens its presence in the market, Samsung Electronics is anticipated to reach a position where it can control market prices.
On the 5th, market research firm TrendForce stated in its third-quarter SSD market outlook report that "Since the second quarter, the increase in data center server shipments has led to a rise in enterprise SSD purchases. Samsung products will account for more than 50% of enterprise SSDs shipped to data centers in North America in the third quarter," and predicted that "Samsung Electronics, the top SSD supplier, will control the prices of enterprise SSDs in the market."
TrendForce also noted that amid the recent possibility of shortages in some SSD components, Samsung Electronics’ high proportion of in-house procurement for data storage device components gives it greater supply flexibility compared to other companies, allowing it to further increase its market share in the enterprise SSD market. Intel’s NAND business, which is being acquired by SK Hynix, recently faced production constraints for enterprise SSDs due to a shortage of power management integrated circuits (PMICs), but Samsung Electronics’ situation is different.
Samsung Electronics has recently accelerated its expansion of market share in the enterprise SSD market. In February, it announced the start of mass production in the first half of this year of the 'PM9A3 E1.S,' a high-performance data center SSD and the industry’s first to meet the Open Compute Project (OCP) standards based on 6th-generation V-NAND. In April, it released the PM1653, the industry’s highest-performance enterprise server SSD supporting the latest SAS-4 standard. On the 2nd, it also launched a next-generation enterprise server SSD applying Zoned Namespace (ZNS) technology.
Meanwhile, TrendForce forecasted that enterprise SSD prices in the third quarter will rise by 10 to 15% compared to the second quarter, revising upward from the initial estimate of 5 to 10%. This is due to reduced inventory among North American cloud providers and expansion of data center servers, which is expected to drive prices up. TrendForce added, "While demand for notebook computers remains strong, the supply of SSD controller chips is relatively tight," and predicted that "third-quarter PC SSD prices will increase by 3 to 8% compared to the previous quarter."
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