South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co and US-based Micron Technology Inc emerged as DRAM market leaders in the third quarter of the year, while Taiwan’s Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) continued to struggle with sinking product prices, according to research firm IHS iSuppli.
Revenue in the DRAM industry as a whole dropped 15.8 percent to US$6.8 billion (NT$206 billion) from the second quarter as a result of extremely weak pricing, IHS iSuppli said in a recent report.
The revenue of the top eight vendors, which accounted for 97.6 percent of the DRAM market in the third quarter, dropped by 18.5 percent from US$8 billion in the previous quarter to US$6.6 billion, the report said.
Samsung, which has long been a leader in the DRAM market, expanded its share by 3.5 percentage points to 45 percent in the third quarter. At the same time, the fall in the firm’s average selling price (ASP) of nearly 17 percent was below the market average of 26 percent, the report said.
Fourth-placed Micron Co saw its third-quarter market share increase from 10.6 percent to 12.1 percent in the second quarter, pushing it to within a hair’s breadth of third-place Elpida Memory Inc of Japan, according to the report.
Elpida’s market share fell from 14.6 percent to 12.1 percent in the same period. Its ASP plummeted 39 percent as a rising yen made the company’s manufacturing facility in Japan more expensive than production sites outside Japan.
The market share of second-placed Hynix Semiconductor Inc of South Korea dropped from 23.4 percent to 21.5 percent and its ASP fell 29 percent during the third quarter, faster than the industry average.
In fifth place, Nanya registered a drop in its ASP of 32 percent, resulting in a fall in market share from 4.7 percent to 3.6 percent, IHS iSuppli said.
Nanya continues to be heavily exposed to the commodity market and will find the next few quarters an uphill climb, especially because that market is forecast to remain slightly oversupplied, the research firm said.
Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子), ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) and Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) of Taiwan ranked sixth, seventh and eighth, with a market share of 1.6 percent, 0.9 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively.
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