[Peace&Chips] Samsung Electronics Recovers Market Share... Memory Market Fully Awakens

Samsung Records 45% Market Share in Q4 Last Year
DDR5 DRAM Impact... HBM Also a Factor

'Recovery' DRAM and NAND Market Growth Over 20%
"Enterprise SSD Prices Expected to Rise 25%"

Memory semiconductor companies' performance results for the fourth quarter of last year have recently been released. Market research firms Omdia and TrendForce disclosed the market shares of DRAM and NAND flash for that quarter. Although there are slight differences in the figures announced by the two companies, two major points can be noted overall.

The first is Samsung Electronics' recovery in market share. Samsung Electronics has been the leading company maintaining a market share in the 40% range in the DRAM market, but it could not avoid a downward trend entering last year. According to Omdia statistics, the share dropped consecutively in the first quarter (42.8%) and second quarter (40.3%), and fell to the 30% range in the third quarter (38.7%).

There were concerns in the market about this. Samsung Electronics, which had maintained a super-gap competitiveness in the DRAM sector, was increasingly evaluated as not leading the market as it did in the past. In the third quarter of last year, SK Hynix, ranked second, recorded a 34.4% market share, narrowing the gap with Samsung Electronics to 4.3 percentage points.

This change was the result of SK Hynix's preemption of the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) sector, a memory for artificial intelligence (AI). SK Hynix also showed strong performance in the high-value-added DRAM area such as Double Data Rate (DDR) 5. Inside Samsung Electronics, there were voices of self-reflection regarding falling behind in the HBM business.

Then, Samsung Electronics gained a turnaround opportunity in the fourth quarter of last year. According to Omdia, it recorded a 45.7% market share, an increase of 7.0 percentage points from the previous quarter. This was the highest score since the third quarter of 2016 (48.2%). TrendForce statistics also showed a 45.5% market share, up 6.6 percentage points from the previous quarter.

TrendForce explained that Samsung Electronics achieved this result by significantly increasing DDR5 DRAM sales in that quarter. The shipment volume of server DRAM increased by more than 60% compared to the previous quarter, showing strong performance. It is expected that Samsung Electronics will also perform better in the HBM market this year compared to last year.

Younggun Kim, a researcher at Mirae Asset Securities, evaluated, "(Samsung Electronics) was late in initial decision-making but found the direction," and predicted, "This year, the company's HBM shipment volume will increase nearly threefold compared to the previous year." Samsung Electronics recently became the first in the industry to unveil the 12-layer HBM3E, the fifth-generation HBM product.

The second point to note is that sales in both the DRAM and NAND markets showed double-digit growth rates. Since the second half of last year, signals indicating a recovery in the industry have appeared one after another, and now a full-fledged recovery can be observed in various indicators.

According to Omdia, the global DRAM market sales recorded $17.56 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, an increase of 29.97% from the previous quarter. TrendForce statistics also showed a 29.55% growth rate. The NAND market, according to TrendForce, recorded sales of $11.4858 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, up 24.45% from the previous quarter.

In particular, the recovery in the solid-state drive (SSD) sector, a NAND-based auxiliary storage device, was remarkable. Sales in the enterprise SSD market in the fourth quarter of last year surged 47.6% from the previous quarter to $2.306 billion. Market shares of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in this market also increased significantly.

TrendForce predicted, "(Going forward) enterprise SSD prices will rise, and fixed transaction prices will increase by more than 25%," adding, "Sales in the first quarter are expected to increase by more than 20%."