While Samsung Electronics kept the No. 1 spot in the global NAND flash market in the second quarter this year, China's Yangtze Memory (YMTC) for the first time entered the global top three by shipments.
On the 12th, Counterpoint Research said Samsung Electronics took 25% of global NAND shipments in the second quarter this year to rank first. However, as it prioritized production of the relatively higher-margin DRAM, its shipment share fell from 32% two years ago.
SK hynix, including its subsidiary Solidigm, ranked second with a 22% share. The gain is attributed to Solidigm's shipments increasing 40% from the previous quarter.
YMTC, with a 14% share by shipments, beat Kioxia and made the global top three for the first time. Shipments rose 22% from a year earlier and 5% from the prior quarter, expanding its share amid a supply shortage phase.
However, by revenue, it placed fifth after Micron and Kioxia. Because the share of high-priced, data center enterprise solid-state drives (eSSD) is small, the increase in shipments did not immediately translate into revenue growth, analysts said.
A defining feature of the second-quarter NAND market was a sharp rise in server eSSD demand as artificial intelligence (AI) workloads moved from training to inference. Server eSSD accounted for 48% of total NAND shipments, up significantly from 26% a year earlier, and related revenue increased fivefold from the second quarter last year to an all-time high.
Counterpoint Research noted, "By the end of this year, server eSSD will account for more than half of total NAND shipments," adding, "The future profitability of the NAND market will be determined by product mix centered on high value-added products rather than simple shipment volume."