November 21, 2024

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SK hynix's headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province (Newsis)

SK hynix, the world’s No. 2 memory chipmaker, was the only company that elevated its market share in the soaring global DRAM market in the second quarter of this year, according to market tracker TrendForce Friday.

In the April-June period, DRAM sales totaled $22.9 billion, a 24.8 percent jump from the previous quarter.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chipmaker, retained its No. 1 position with $9.8 billion in sales. But the company’s market share slightly decreased from 43.9 percent to 42.9 percent compared to the previous quarter.

SK hynix, the No. 2 memory maker, has narrowed its gap with Samsung. The company reported $7.9 billion in DRAM sales, an almost 40 percent jump from the first quarter. Its market share also rose from 31.1 percent to 34.5 percent during the same period.

TrendForce attributed the robust growth to SK hynix's leadership in burgeoning high bandwidth memory chips, which are crucial to power high-performance computing for artificial intelligence. Currently, the company is the major supplier to US chip giant Nvidia.

US-based Micron Technology also saw its second-quarter sales rise by 14.1 percent on-quarter to $4.5 billion. But its DRAM market share fell from 21.5 percent to 19.6 percent over the past quarter.

In the meantime, TrendForce expects DRAM prices to continue rising in the third quarter, following the trend observed in the second quarter.

By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)