TAIPEI: Sales of mobile DRAM surged in the third quarter as the smartphone industry was in its traditional inventory buildup season and the global DRAM market enjoyed an across-the-broad price increase, reports DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce.
Consequently, the mobile DRAM revenue for the quarter rose by about 16.8% sequentially to around USD 4.59 billion.
“The market releases of Apple’s iPhone 7 and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 generated a large wave of stock-up demand in the global mobile DRAM market during the third quarter,” said Avril Wu, research director of DRAMeXchange. “Even though Samsung later had to discontinue the production of Note 7 in the fourth quarter, the launch of the flagship device already contributed significantly to the third-quarter mobile DRAM sales.”
The conversion of suppliers’ third-quarter mobile DRAM revenues into market shares reveals that Samsung grew its market share to 64.5%, while SK Hynix and Micron respectively held on to 22.8% and 10.6%. Collectively, the top three DRAM suppliers represented about 97.9% of mobile DRAM market worldwide. The fourth-largest mobile DRAM supplier in the third quarter was Nanya and its global market share was only 1.3%.
“Mobile DRAM also accounted for 43.5% of the total DRAM revenue worldwide in the third quarter,” Wu pointed out. “Going forward, Samsung’s competitors in the smartphone market will try expand their device production and shipments to capture the market share that Samsung lost due to the Note 7 incident. At the same time, prices of mobile DRAM will still be going up. Thus, sales of mobile DRAM are expected to make up a greater share of industry’s revenue in the fourth quarter.”
