Samsung, Qimonda Retain Leading Positions on the DRAM Market

by Anton Shilov
11/27/2006 | 11:49 PM

According to research firms DRAMeXchange and iSuppli, Samsung Electronics and Qimonda AG have managed to retain leading positions in the memory, just as the vast majority of the Top 10 memory suppliers on the planet.

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For the second consecutive quarter ProMOS manages to increase its revenues by over 40% sequentially, according to figures from DRAMeXchange which this time allowed the company to post 1% market share increase, a substantial achievement for the company that now controls just a little bit less than 5% of the world’s market of DRAM.

Samsung has not managed to retain its market share of over 26% in the previous quarter and fell to 25.9%, posting revenue increase of 16.7%. Sales boosts posted by Qimonda are far more significant – 25.6% - with market share uptick of 1% to 16.7%, according to DRAMeXchange.

Dynamic random access memory (DRAM) sales in the third quarter beat iSuppli’s estimate, rising 44% from the same quarter in 2005. Sales strength was broad based, with four out of five of the top suppliers increasing their sales by more than 20% compared to the second quarter.

Global DRAM supply bit growth reached 15.8% in Q3 2006, versus the 15% in Q2 2006. However, global DRAM demand bit growth went stronger at 18.9%, boosted by 18.8% quarter-over-quarter PC shipment growth and 16% quarter-over-quarter increase of average memory size within a PC. This caused an 8.26% shortage on DDR2 and 11.35% shortage on DDR, according to DRAMeXchange’s research