With corporate solid state drive (SSD) demand rising on expanded AI data center investment, the global NAND flash market continued to grow in the second quarter. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix each held on to the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, while Micron posted the highest sales growth rate among major players and rose to No. 3.
According to market researcher TrendForce on the 18th, combined sales of the top five global NAND flash companies in the second quarter reached $68.87 billion, up 77% from the previous quarter. With demand for AI server enterprise SSDs increasing, contract prices and the average selling price (ASP) rose amid tight supply.
Samsung Electronics maintained the top spot with second-quarter NAND sales of $23.0593 billion, up 70.7% from the prior quarter. However, as rivals' sales rose faster, its market share fell 2.3 percentage points to 29.3% from 31.6%.
SK hynix, including Solidigm, posted $14.2729 billion in sales to stay at No. 2, up 89.5% from the previous quarter. Expanded production of 321-layer NAND and rising demand for Solidigm's high-capacity QLC (quad-level cell) enterprise SSDs drove results. Market share rose to 18.2% from 17.6%.
Micron recorded the highest sales growth rate among the top five companies at 99.2%. Sales rose to $11.85 billion and market share to 15.1%, overtaking Kioxia for third place.
Kioxia's sales rose 79.9% from the previous quarter to $10.723 billion, but its share slipped to 13.6% from 13.9%. SanDisk also saw sales rise 50.7%, but with a smaller increase than competitors, its share fell to 11.4% from 13.9%.
The NAND market's growth is expected to continue in the third quarter. TrendForce said that while demand for enterprise SSDs remains solid around AI servers, as major memory companies focus investment on DRAM and high bandwidth memory (HBM), expansion of new NAND supply will likely be limited. As a result, it projected continued NAND price increases and industry sales growth.