NAND Flash Revenue and Market Share Q1 2014

I was just reviewing the latest Q1 2014 NAND Supplier Revenue and Market Share numbers from DRAMeXchange and was curious how it compared to a Q2 2013 Revenue/Market Share Post from last year. For comparison’s sake, I created two tables in this post which tell an interesting story.

In three quarters, the NAND Flash market has grown >25% to over $7.2 Billion in Q1 2014. As more and more devices from consumer, mobile, tablet, client and data center markets devour memory, this growth trend appears to be intact for the foreseeable future. As with any growing market, it will have its seasonality and oversupply/undersupply issues along the way.

As far as suppliers are concerned, one thing that hasn’t changed is Samsung continuing to lead the market in total revenue with Toshiba in second position. A new entrant to the list, but not a new entrant to the market, is SanDisk. Previously the Toshiba/SanDisk joint fab relationship would be shown only as Toshiba revenue alone.

Q2 2013 to Q1 2014 NAND Supplier Revenue (in Millions US$)

COMPANY	Q2 2013	Q1 2014	% CHANGE
SAMSUNG	$ 2,184.1	$ 2,175.0	- 0.4%
TOSHIBA	$ 1,659.4	$ 1,547.7	- 6.7%
SANDISK	NOT INCL.	$ 1,367.0	NA
MICRON	$ 678.0	$ 1,050.0	+ 54.8%
SK HYNIX	$ 840.5	$ 594.2	- 29.3%
INTEL	$ 413.5	$ 510.1	- 23.3%
TOTAL	$ 5,775.5	$ 7,244.0	+ 25.4%

From a Market Share perspective a couple suppliers made room for SanDisk’s addition to the list. Toshiba as expected gave up a portion of market share since much of the previous data showed the SanDisk numbers as Toshiba. A more surprising drop was from Samsung ceding almost 8% of market share.

Many of these figures change on a quarterly basis as suppliers fight to be first to market with the latest trace width and lowest cost technology. As new mega-fabs take several quarters to construct/furnish with capital outlays in the billions, planning is paramount. The last thing a CEO wants is a new fab coming online when the market is already in an oversupply situation.

Q2 2013 to Q1 2014 NAND Supplier Market Share

COMPANY	Q2 2013	Q1 2014	SHARE GAIN/LOSS
SAMSUNG	37.8 %	30.0 %	- 7.8 %
TOSHIBA	28.7 %	21.4 %	- 7.3 %
SANDISK	NOT INCL.	18.9 %	+ 18.9 %
MICRON	11.7 %	14.5 %	+ 2.8 %
SK HYNIX	14.6 %	8.2 %	- 6.4 %
INTEL	7.2 %	7.0 %	- 0.2 %

While not specifically about Cactus Technologies products, the NAND flash market is an interesting beast. I will continue to post market share related information from time to time.