South Korean companies under pressure from Chinese newcomers.
For thirty-three years, Samsung has dominated the DRAM chip production market. Thirty years that the South Korean company seemed untouchable in this sector, but the rise to power of another South Korean company got the better of the giant. Indeed, the top spot in this market remains in the Land of the Morning Calm, with SK Hynix taking first place, according to a study published by Counterpoint and reported by ComputerBase.
The DRAM market in Q1 2025 © ComputerBase
According to Counterpoint, Samsung's market share in the first quarter of 2025 is "only" 34%, while SK Hynix has 36%. In third place is American manufacturer Micron, with 25% market share. These figures can be put into perspective with those of another study, published by TrendForce for the fourth quarter of 2024. This shows that Samsung's decline did not benefit SK Hynix so much as the other manufacturers: although the calculation methods may differ, according to TrendForce, SK Hynix already had a 36% market share at that time, while Samsung had a market share of almost 40%.
The DRAM market in Q4 2024 © ComputerBase
Samsung is going through this rough patch for two reasons. Firstly, compared with SK Hynix, Samsung has missed the boat on artificial intelligence: this requires high-bandwidth memory, the famous HBM. In this segment alone, SK Hynix is said to account for almost 70% of the market. Secondly, Samsung is said to have largely lost ground in the "older" memory segments, DDR3 and DDR4. SK Hynix and Micron are in the same position in this niche alone, as Chinese companies are stepping up to the plate and taking over this lower value-added market. ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), for example, is said to have considerably increased its production capacity: ComputerBase reports that the Chinese firm will have increased its production capacity from 70,000 wafers per month in 2022 to 200,000 wafers per month in 2024. More importantly, CXMT is said to be on the verge of moving into DDR5 and LPDDR5 memory. Enough to make Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron even more worried?
