TAIPEI, TAIWAN: According to DRAMeXchange, price of DRAM has been appreciated by 17 percent QoQ in contract market and only 4.4 percent in spot market in 2Q.

The relatively strong price appreciation in the contract market has benefited those DRAM makers, who have a relatively high sales exposure to the contract market, with a relatively strong QoQ sales growth. However, this situation excludes those who have caught in process node migration bottleneck in the quarter.

Powerchip, though having its target places at the spot market, also saw its sales from branded chips surpassed most rivals, thanks to decline of foundry production proportion and consistent expansion at Rexchip. Among all major players, only Qimonda saw its quarterly sales decline due to output shrink in 2Q.

By reviewing major players’ EBIT performance, Samsung is the only DRAM maker that managed to have made profit in 2Q on a dominant market share. Recalling the Korean player’s 1Q investor conference, it announced that it aims for a 100 percent YoY supply bit growth in 2008 with considerable resources spent already. It updated that its 2Q bit growth as 20 percent+, marking the biggest growth among all.

However, Samsung’s sales growth did not outstrip rivals because: it has secured some long-term supply contracts with low quotes; a depreciation of Korean Won by 7 percent; and the ASP erosion of GDDDR and mobile RAM.

2008 WW Top 10 DRAM Brand Revenue Ranking (in Million USD)
(DRAM Revenue: Not Including Foundry, FLASH, CMOS Image Sensor)

Market share among major DRAM makers only shows minimal change in 2Q. Market share breakdown by region is Korea 47.2 percent, Japan 16.3 percent, Taiwan 14.6 percent, US 12.5 percent, and Germany 9.4 percent.

In 2Q08, if DRAM foundry business revenue is included, the market share of PSC and Promos would be 8.2 percent and 4.5 percent.

Market share of the Qimonda camp is expected to drop below 15 percent in 2008, down from 23 percent in 2006. Causes of the market share erosion are: Qimonda will focus on Buried Wordline, but not trench DRAM development in the future; Nanya will gradually move away from trench DRAM production; SMIC also to gradually phase out trench DRAM production; and Inotera’s possible switch from trench to stack DRAM production.

Besides Qimonda, currently only the 200mm fab (Fab 1) and 300mm fab (Fab 3) at Nanya, and a very limited capacity at ProMOS, are still running trench DRAM production.

Samsung still grabs the largest market share among all camp at 25.89 percent, followed by Hynix and ProMOS’s 24.15 percent, respectively. Elpida achieved a stunning market share growth over the past two years upon capacity expansion at in house and Powerchip.

By having a JV of Rexchip, the Elpida camp strives to get a bigger bite of the pie. Market share of the camp pegged at 20.7 percent. Since Qimonda and Elpida forge their partnership on from 40nm onwards without any other partnership underway at the moment, they are not being classified as a same group.