SK Hynix’s NAND flash business is falling behind competitors such as Samsung Electronics and Micron in generation transition speed, and the productivity gap shows little sign of narrowing. As of Q2 this year, legacy processes such as 176-layer NAND still account for more than half of production, while Samsung Electronics has already completed its transition to 236-layer as its mainstream generation.<\/p>\n
According to industry sources on the 28th, SK Hynix’s 176-layer output accounted for 50\u201360% of its NAND production in Q2 this year. A source familiar with SK Hynix said, “Unlike competitors who have firmly established 200-layer-class NAND products as their mainstream over the past year, SK Hynix still has excessive dependence on 176-layer products,” adding, “As NAND process transition investment has been pushed down the priority list, concerns are growing about the widening gap with competitors.”<\/p>\n
NAND flash memory stacks cells vertically to increase both capacity and cost efficiency. Even on the same wafer area, higher layer counts allow more data to be stored, improving both per-wafer output and cost competitiveness. As a result, companies that fail to transition to next-generation processes must deploy more wafers and line operating time to produce the same volume, inevitably placing them at a profitability disadvantage.<\/p>\n
Samsung Electronics surpassed 60% on 236-layer as of the end of Q2 this year, firmly establishing it as its mainstream generation. Both SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics possess early-to-mid 200-layer generation technology, but there is a clear gap in actual mass production transition speed. An industry source explained, “Samsung Electronics is pursuing a strategy of concentrating production volume on specific generations to simultaneously secure yield and cost advantages, whereas SK Hynix has multiple generations coexisting, which inevitably results in relatively lower line operating efficiency.”<\/p>\n
SK Hynix is also at a disadvantage compared to Micron and China’s YMTC, not just Samsung Electronics. According to market research firm Omdia, as of the end of Q2 this year, Micron had expanded 232-layer to 53% and next-generation 276-layer to 33%. YMTC reached 68% on 232-layer, indicating it has already established an advanced process-centered production system.<\/p>\n
For Kioxia and SanDisk, as of Q2 this year, 162-layer (BiCS6) accounted for 37% and 112-layer (BiCS5) for 34%, with legacy processes still comprising roughly 70% of total output\u2014appearing similar to SK Hynix in generation terms. However, the share of their latest generation BiCS8 (218-layer) jumped from 9% in Q4 last year to 24% in Q2 this year, nearly tripling in just two quarters, suggesting their transition speed is relatively fast.<\/p>\n
The NAND flash layer count share by major company is as follows.<\/p>\n
CompanyMainstream GenerationShareNotesSK Hynix176-layer50\u201360%Legacy process majoritySamsung Electronics236-layer60%+Mainstream transition completeMicron232-layer53%276-layer at 33% in parallelYMTC232-layer68%Advanced process-centeredKioxia\u00b7SanDisk162-layer (BiCS6)37%BiCS8 (218-layer) at 24%<\/p>\n
Note: As of end of Q2 2026. Compiled from Omdia and industry sources.<\/p>\n
This trend is also reflected in revenue share. According to industry sources, SK Hynix’s (including Solidigm) NAND revenue share climbed to 21.4% in Q4 last year before plunging nearly 5 percentage points to 16.4% in Q1 this year. During the same period, China’s YMTC’s share jumped from 11.5% to 16.2%, nearly catching up to SK Hynix. Some interpret this as SK Hynix having relatively insufficient volume response capability during a period of rising NAND prices.<\/p>\n
An industry source said, “During periods of rising prices, the higher the share of new-generation products, the more significantly price increases translate into improved margins through cost improvements,” adding, “SK Hynix’s share decline should be viewed as a result of delayed generation transition, beyond a simple volume issue.” However, the source noted, “The recent NAND price uptrend is continuing, so the impact on actual earnings is limited.”<\/p>\n
Analysis also suggests that SK Hynix’s prioritization of DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in capital expenditure has made it difficult to accelerate NAND process transition. SK Hynix’s NAND capital expenditure reportedly declined for three consecutive years: $3.5 billion (approximately 4.8 trillion won) in 2023, $3.0 billion (approximately 4.1 trillion won) in 2024, and $2.9 billion (approximately 4 trillion won) in 2025.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, SK Hynix held a groundbreaking ceremony for an advanced packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, to respond to expanding AI memory demand. With total investment exceeding $4 billion (approximately 5.5 trillion won), the facility targets mass production of next-generation HBM in the second half of 2029. Kwak Noh-jung, President and CEO of SK Hynix, announced plans to begin mass production of HBM4E starting in Q3 2029. With investment concentration on DRAM and HBM cited as the backdrop for delayed NAND generation transition, the recovery of NAND competitiveness is expected to be a key variable for future earnings and market dominance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SK Hynix’s NAND flash business is falling behind competitors such as Samsung Electronics and Micron in generation transition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[9464,1485,24867,276,9463,241,275,35576,10595],"class_list":["post-135085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sk-hynix","tag-kioxia","tag-micron","tag-omdia","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-sandisk","tag-sk","tag-sk-hynix","tag-solidigm","tag-ymtc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}