According to market researchers, SK Hynix has replaced Samsung as the largest DRAM manufacturer for the first time. This marks the end of Samsung's 33-year market leadership. The overtaking maneuver was made possible by the sales advantage in the coveted High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).
Since 1992, Samsung had led the global DRAM manufacturers, according to unanimous reports in the Asian media. And now it is the big competitor from the same country that is overtaking the manufacturer from South Korea. At least according to a study by market researchers at Counterpoint, which gives SK Hynix a market share of 36% of sales in the first quarter of 2025 and Samsung a market share of just 34%. Micron ranks third in this statistic with 25 percent, while the remaining 5 percent is distributed among smaller manufacturers that are not named separately.
The fact that SK Hynix was able to take the lead is attributed to a DRAM product that has enjoyed extremely high demand in recent years due to the AI boom: High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), which consists of stacked DRAM dies and is used as fast working memory on GPU-based AI accelerator cards such as Nvidia's GB200 or AMD's MI325X.
According to Business Korea, SK Hynix currently holds around 70 percent of the HBM market, which is also served by Micron (since recently) and Samsung.
Huge loss of share at Samsung
If we take the market shares calculated by TrendForce for the fourth quarter of 2024 as a benchmark, however, it is not a major gain for SK Hynix, but rather a huge drop in share from the market leader that gives SK Hynix the throne. According to TrendForce, Samsung was still at 39.3 percent at the end of last year, meaning it would now have lost a good 5 percentage points. SK Hynix was already at 36.6 percent in those statistics, so would now have lost even slightly. Micron, on the other hand, would have increased significantly from 22.4 percent to 25 percent.
The sleeping giant from China awakens
However, the biggest growth would have been among the remaining manufacturers: TrendForce cited just a total of 1.6 percent market share for the small manufacturers after Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron for the fourth quarter of 2024. However, Counterpoint now speaks of 5 percent for the "others", which would have significantly increased their share.
The extent to which the studies are comparable will become clear when TrendForce presents new figures, which may or may not confirm SK Hynix as the market leader.
However, it is also clear that there is a secret winner that is responsible for the significant growth among the small manufacturers: Chinese newcomer ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has massively increased its production capacities. There has been talk in some quarters of an increase from 70,000 wafers per month in 2022 to 200,000 wafers per month in 2024.
Chinese media even predicted a market share of up to 15% for CXMT in 2025 if the company conquers the market with the latest DDR5 and LPDDR5. TrendForce assumes a share of at least 10 percent. CXMT is therefore already likely to be the new number four among DRAM manufacturers, overtaking competitors such as Nanya and Winbond.
