China’s largest DRAM manufacturer, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), has broken through the 10% global DRAM market share threshold, cracking the memory market structure long dominated by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. CXMT expects memory supply shortages to persist through the second half and is accelerating capacity expansion and server product initiatives.<\/p>\n
According to Taiwanese tech media outlet DigiTimes on the 8th (local time), CXMT said during its earnings call the previous day that it expects global memory supply to remain tight through the second half of this year. The company’s assessment is that while AI infrastructure investment is driving memory demand, major players are prioritizing production capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and server DRAM, leaving general-purpose DRAM markets in a state of persistent undersupply.<\/p>\n
This outlook aligns with data from market research firms. According to TrendForce, global DRAM industry revenue in Q2 this year reached $154.73 billion (approximately 207.4 trillion won), up 59.5% quarter-over-quarter. The surge was driven by large language model (LLM) training and the proliferation of AI inference, which boosted shipments across various memory product categories.<\/p>\n
CXMT More Than Doubles Market Share… Server Revenue Surpasses Mobile<\/p>\n
CXMT’s growth trajectory is outpacing market expectations. According to Counterpoint Research, CXMT’s global DRAM revenue share reached 10% in Q2 this year, more than doubling from 4% a year earlier. Based on TrendForce’s methodology, its share climbed 1.9 percentage points in a single quarter, from 7.6% in Q1 to 9.5% in Q2.<\/p>\n
Particularly noteworthy is the quality of this growth. In Q2, CXMT’s server DRAM revenue surpassed mobile DRAM revenue for the first time. As recently as last year, mobile products accounted for roughly 60% of revenue, but the product portfolio is rapidly shifting toward the high-value server market. CXMT’s first-half revenue this year grew approximately tenfold year-over-year, and the company swung to a net profit.<\/p>\n
U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs projects that CXMT could supply roughly half of China’s DRAM demand and capture up to 40% of China’s HBM demand by 2028. However, the technology gap with leading players\u2014Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron\u2014remains substantial in AI-focused HBM. While CXMT reportedly succeeded in producing fifth-generation HBM recently, industry consensus is that mass production remains challenging.<\/p>\n
Samsung Solidifies Top Spot at 39.4%… SK Hynix Falls Below 25%<\/p>\n
Based on TrendForce data, Q2 DRAM revenue and market share by company are as follows:<\/p>\n
CompanyQ2 RevenueQoQ ChangeMarket ShareSamsung Electronics$60.98 billion (approx. 81.8 trillion won)+63.4%39.4%SK Hynix$38.59 billion (approx. 51.7 trillion won)+37.9%24.9%Micron$36 billion (approx. 48.3 trillion won)+65.5%23.3%CXMT\u2014\u20149.5%<\/p>\n
Note: TrendForce does not disclose CXMT revenue figures<\/p>\n
Samsung Electronics posted the largest shipment growth among the three major memory makers, driven by early mass production and shipment of HBM4, its sixth-generation HBM. Its market share rose from 38.5% in Q1 to 39.4% in Q2, approaching the 40% mark. The company has held the top spot for three consecutive quarters since reaching 36% in Q4 last year.<\/p>\n
In contrast, SK Hynix saw its share fall 3.9 percentage points from 28.8% in Q1 to 24.9% in Q2, despite a 37.9% revenue increase. Its share has now declined for four consecutive quarters: 33.2% in Q3 last year, 32.1% in Q4, 28.8% in Q1 this year, and now 24.9%. The decline is attributed to limited capacity to expand general-purpose DRAM shipments due to its HBM-centric production strategy, compounded by the fact that HBM is largely governed by long-term supply agreements (LTAs), preventing the company from fully capitalizing on surging commodity DRAM prices.<\/p>\n
Micron saw revenue surge 65.5%, lifting its share to 23.3% and narrowing the gap with SK Hynix to just 1.6 percentage points. The share gap between Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix widened significantly from 3.9 percentage points in Q4 last year to 14.5 percentage points in Q2 this year.<\/p>\n
“Inventories Below 10 Days… Sellable Supply Could Be Depleted”<\/p>\n
The intensity of the supply shortage is starkly evident in inventory metrics. According to a report released by KB Securities on the 7th, memory inventories at Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have fallen below 10 days as of Q3. Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, said, “Beyond a simple demand recovery, we could see an unprecedented situation where sellable supply itself is depleted.”<\/p>\n
He projected that AI servers are driving not only HBM demand but also massive demand for server DDR5 and enterprise SSDs, potentially creating a “historic-level supply shortage.” Global hyperscale cloud providers’ AI infrastructure investment next year is estimated at $1.3 trillion (approximately 1,742.9 trillion won), up 60% year-over-year, with memory semiconductors’ share of that investment expected to surge from 14% this year to 57% next year.<\/p>\n
A structural factor intensifying the shortage is the transition to HBM4. HBM4 requires roughly three times the wafer production capacity of general-purpose DRAM, and with total wafer capacity constrained, expanding HBM4 production inevitably cannibalizes general-purpose DRAM capacity. KB Securities estimates that as a result, bit demand for DRAM and NAND flash will exceed supply by more than 10 percentage points next year.<\/p>\n
Q3 Price Growth Moderating… “But Supply Shortage Persists”<\/p>\n
Price increases, however, are expected to moderate somewhat. TrendForce forecasts Q3 general-purpose DRAM contract price increases will slow to 13\u201318% quarter-over-quarter. This reflects some demand shifting from high-capacity server memory (RDIMM) to lower-capacity products, as well as PC and smartphone manufacturers finding it increasingly difficult to absorb additional price hikes.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the prevailing industry view is that the broader supply shortage picture will remain unchanged. TrendForce projects that while Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron will accelerate advanced process node transitions and push for shipment growth in 2026\u20132027, capacity constraints from advanced node migration will limit overall shipment increases.<\/p>\n
KB Securities noted that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix shares have fallen 38% from their highs over the past three months, pushing forward price-to-earnings (P\/E) ratios down to approximately 3x. Given that both companies are expected to post record earnings for a third consecutive year, the brokerage assessed current valuations as severely undervalued relative to fundamentals. With the likelihood of continued large-scale shareholder return policies, KB Securities suggested the stocks may be at the early stages of a re-rating.<\/p>\n
CXMT’s aggressive production expansion and its potential impact on the global memory supply structure is another key factor to watch. Some analysts express concern that if CXMT scales up capacity centered on general-purpose DRAM, it could trigger oversupply in the medium to long term. However, the prevailing view is that AI demand is currently so strong that it will be difficult to reverse the near-term supply shortage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China’s largest DRAM manufacturer, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), has broken through the 10% global DRAM market share threshold,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[44914,11446,51321,4287,466,15606,1485,276,241,275,23385],"class_list":["post-147809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sk-hynix","tag-changxin-memory-technologies-cxmt","tag-counterpoint-research","tag-digitimes","tag-hbm4","tag-kb-securities","tag-kim-dong-won","tag-micron","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-sk","tag-sk-hynix","tag-trendforce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147809","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=147809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}