Buoyed by expanded AI infrastructure investment, demand for enterprise SSDs surged, driving sharp growth in the global NAND flash market in the first quarter of this year. As demand increased for high-capacity server products, major companies' revenue nearly doubled from the previous quarter.
According to market researcher TrendForce on the 25th, the combined revenue of the world's top five NAND flash suppliers in the first quarter of this year rose 83.7% from the previous quarter to $38.9 billion.
Samsung Electronics posted revenue of $13.51 billion, up 104.7% from the previous quarter, recording the highest growth rate among major players. As a result, Samsung Electronics' NAND market share (by revenue) expanded from 28% in the prior quarter to 31.6%.
SK hynix (including Solidigm) maintained second place with revenue of $7.53 billion, up 44.6% in the same period. Market share was tallied at 17.6%.
Competition for third place was also intense. Kioxia posted $5.96 billion, and Micron and SanDisk each recorded $5.95 billion in revenue, each showing a 13.9% share.
The industry expects the NAND market's supply shortage, driven by rising AI demand, to continue through the end of the year. While smartphone and PC demand is showing signs of slowing due to higher memory prices and increases in finished goods prices, demand for corporate server products is offsetting this, analysts said.
TrendForce projected that major NAND makers will minimize new capacity expansion this year and instead maintain average selling prices (ASP) through pricing strategies. It also said that by year-end, NAND products with more than 200 layers will become mainstream, and as production resources concentrate on server products, adoption of high-capacity QLC-based enterprise SSDs will expand.