Samsung Electronics is expected to clearly reclaim the top spot in the fourth quarter this year in its competition with SK hynix for the No. 1 position in the DRAM market. The spread of artificial intelligence (AI) is pushing up prices not only for high-performance memory but also for commodity memory, making the earnings rebound more pronounced.
According to the industry on the 7th, Samsung Electronics is widely expected to regain the No. 1 spot by revenue in the global DRAM market in the fourth quarter. The securities market expects Samsung Electronics' fourth-quarter operating profit to top 18 trillion won, far exceeding the market consensus (outlook). Within that, the operating profit of the Device Solutions (DS) institutional sector in charge of semiconductors is forecast at about 15.1 trillion won, up 166% from the previous quarter and 422% from a year earlier.
Samsung Electronics ceded the DRAM No. 1 position to SK hynix in the first quarter this year for the first time in 33 years, and in the second quarter even lost the top spot in the overall memory market. Its competitiveness wavered in the market for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI. However, as HBM supply normalized in the second half, the gap narrowed quickly. According to market research firm TrendForce, third-quarter DRAM market shares were SK hynix 33.2%, Samsung Electronics 32.6%, and Micron 25.7%. The gap between the two companies, which was 6 percentage points in the second quarter, shrank to 0.6 percentage points.
Following this trend, the industry is saying Samsung Electronics will stably regain the No. 1 position in the fourth quarter.
In particular, the sharp rise in commodity memory prices is directly boosting earnings. As demand for HBM needed for AI infrastructure surges and production of older memory declines, commodity DRAM prices have climbed steeply in recent months. As big tech corporations move to secure memory to expand data centers, rising prices are being led across the board, from commodity DRAM to even NAND.
Among the three global memory makers, Samsung Electronics has the largest production capacity and a relatively higher share of commodity DRAM in its revenue mix, leading to analysis that it will be the primary beneficiary of rising prices.