Samsung Electronics leveraged a surge in demand for high-capacity enterprise solid-state drives (eSSD) for AI servers to raise its market share and cement its No. 1 position. The result comes as the entire eSSD market set an all-time high for revenue amid increased data center investment driven by AI's spread and a structural supply shortage.
According to market research firm TrendForce on the 11th, combined revenue of the top five global eSSD vendors in the first quarter was $18.46 billion, up 86.1% from the previous quarter. With inventories at major suppliers falling to record lows and production ramp-ups failing to keep pace with orders, a severe supply-demand imbalance emerged, and as vendors moved to raise prices one after another, eSSD contract prices jumped about 80% in a single quarter.
Samsung Electronics posted standout results in this market environment. First-quarter eSSD revenue rose 92.8% from the previous quarter to $7.05 billion, and market share expanded from 33.8% to 35.1%. Expanding the transition to 236-layer NAND boosted supply, proving effective. However, TrendForce noted that demand growth from cloud service providers (CSPs) is outpacing supply expansion, falling short of a full resolution of the supply-demand mismatch.
The gap with competitors also widened markedly. No. 2 SK hynix (including Solidigm) posted $4.64 billion in revenue, up 42.5% from the prior quarter, but its market share fell from 30.2% to 23.1%. As a result, the market share gap with Samsung Electronics widened sharply from 3.6 percentage points in the previous quarter to 12 percentage points. Micron, by reallocating production resources from smartphone and retail NAND to eSSD, achieved $3.09 billion in revenue and lifted its share from 13% to 15.4%.
Growth in Samsung Electronics' eSSD business is expected to continue for the time being. TrendForce projected that demand for high-performance, high-capacity storage will expand structurally as AI workloads increase. With capacity limits and expense burdens growing for DRAM, SSDs are rapidly establishing themselves as a core memory tier within AI infrastructure, suggesting the eSSD market's growth momentum will persist this year.