The global market for smartphone memory chips reached a combined value of $39.3 billion in 2019, according to a Strategy Analytics report.
Samsung Memory has smartphone memory revenue market share of 47 percent in 2019, followed by SK Hynix and Micron.
Samsung strengthened its position in both NAND Flash and DRAM markets. The top-three vendors captured almost 84 percent revenue share in the global smartphone memory market in 2019.
NAND Market
The total NAND Flash revenue for smartphones declined 29 percent due to the slowdown in the demand in 2019.
Samsung Memory dominated the NAND Flash market with a revenue share of 42 percent. Kioxia with a share of 22 percent and SK Hynix with a share of 16 percent are the other top players in the smartphone NAND flash market in 2019.
DRAM Market
The DRAM market revenue for smartphones fell 27 percent due to the fall in demand and pricing challenges.
Samsung Memory’s DRAM market revenue share was 51 percent. SK Hynix has 29 percent and Micron has 19 percent share in DRAM market.
Samsung Memory registered successful design wins with major smartphone OEMs for its NAND Flash and DRAM memory chips in 2019 which drove its revenue.
The increase in the demand for eMMC and UFS based Multichip Packages contributed in the chip shipments for Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, says Jeffrey Mathews, analyst at Strategy Analytics, in a statement.
The smartphone memory market is expected to witness a slowdown in memory demand ahead, owing to the disruptions in global smartphone production and waning demand in end-product markets due to COVID-19 pandemic.
The memory vendors would soon enable their portfolio to leverage the growing demand for new memory technologies such as UFS 3.0 and LPDDR5 among smartphone OEMs, says Stephen Entwistle, VP of Strategic Technologies Practice at Strategy Analytics.
