Taiwan's DRAM makers see fastest market growth

Taiwanese memory makers may have seen big sales gains during Q3, but they remain a long way from market leadership, according to quarterly statistics from market watcher Gartner Dataquest.

Out of the top ten DRAM makers, Taiwan's Nanya, PowerChip and ProMOS all saw the biggest sequential revenue growth in Q3, Gartner's numbers show.

Nanya's sales were up 30.7 per cent from $308m in Q2 to $422m the following quarter. PowerChip's gain was a more modest 20 per cent, from $225m to $270m, and ProMOS' increase lower still: up 15.8 per cent from $190m to $220m.

Japan's Elpida was close behind in the growth stakes. Its sales went from $403m to $466m sequentially, a rise of 15.6 per cent. By contrast, market leader Samsung's sales rose a mere 4.4 per cent between the two quarters.

But then Samsung's sales totalled $1.98bn, more than twice the sales of the three Taiwanese firms' quarterly sales put together, so we don't think it's too worried.

Samsung accounted for 30.6 per cent of DRAM sales in Q3. Its nearest competitor, fellow South Korean Hynix, took 16.6 per cent of the market, ahead of US-based Micron (15.3 per cent share), Germany's Infineon (13.5 per cent) and fifth-placed Elpida (7.2 per cent).

Nanya, PowerChip and ProMOS took the sixth, seventh and eighth places in the chart, respectively, with shares of 6.5 per cent, 4.2 per cent and 3.4 per cent.

The DRAM market as a whole grew 11.5 per cent sequentially, from $5.8bn to $6.47bn, Gartner said. Industry revenue in the first nine months of the year was $18.9 billion, down 1.9 percent from the same period last year. Gartner said it expects DRAM revenues to decline 2.3 per cent to $25.7bn in 2005. ®