According to the latest statistics from market research firm Omdia, the global DRAM sales in the third quarter of this year were US$17.548 billion, down 29.8% from US$24.984 billion in the previous quarter. Among them, although South Korea’s Samsung maintains the largest market share, its proportion has indeed declined.
Market analysts say the DRAM market has really started to go downhill as global demand continues to decline. The key reason is that global inflation has caused demand for IT products to plummet, making the DRAM market also decline in 2022. Among them, following the decline in PC DRAM prices in October, the decline in server DRAM prices has also been expanding since November.
Due to the decline in the overall DRAM market sales, the sales of various suppliers have also declined. The DRAM sales of South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, the world’s top three manufacturers, were US$7.133 billion, down 34.2% from the previous quarter. SK Hynix’s sales amounted to US$5.246 billion, down 25.3% from the previous quarter. As for Micron Technology’s sales amount, it came to US$4.35 billion, down 26.3%.
Take Samsung’s global DRAM market share of 40.6% in the third quarter, a drop of 2.8 percentage points from 43.4% in the previous quarter. In addition, SK Hynix’s market share increased by 1.8 percentage points to 29.9%. Micron’s market share also increased by 1.2 percentage points to 24.8%.
Given the current market conditions, memory suppliers are now at a point where they are adjusting their inventories in response to this price drop. SK Hynix announced in October that it is considering reducing the production of traditional process products with relatively low profitability. Micron also said in November that compared with the previous quarter, wafer production in November was reduced by 20%, and further production reductions will follow.
With the decline in sales compared with the previous quarter, the capital expenditures of various manufacturers have also declined. SK Hynix plans to reduce its CAPEX by about 50% in 2023 compared to 2022. In addition, compared with 2022, Micron also plans to reduce its capital expenditure by 50% in 2023. As for Samsung, it has previously stated that it has no plan to reduce production because the company hopes to increase its market share when it returns to the recovery stage of memory in the future.
