USA: South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor Inc. was the star performer in the global DRAM industry in the third quarter, outgrowing the other major suppliers and closing its market-share gap with No. 1 Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

Hynix's global DRAM revenue rose to $1.8 billion in the third quarter, up 19.6 percent from $1.5 billion in the second quarter. The company's DRAM market share rose to 22.8 percent, increasing from 20.6 percent in the second quarter. Hynix's DRAM market share in the third quarter closed to within 4.9 percentage points of rival Samsung, down from 7.7 percent in the second quarter.

"Hynix's strong growth was due to its rising Average Selling Price (ASP) premium and its aggressive increase in unit shipments," said Nam Hyung Kim, director and chief analyst, memory ICs/storage systems for iSuppli. "The company boosted its shipments of higher-priced graphics and consumer DRAM, resulting in Hynix being the only supplier that increased its ASP sequentially among the top suppliers."

Hynix's strong growth in the third quarter handily exceeded the results of the other Top-5 suppliers. Micron Technology Inc. of the United States posted the next-best sequential growth, with a rise of 14 percent, 5.6 percentage points less than Hynix's rise.

Among the Top-5, Hynix also was the only supplier to achieve growth on a year-over-year basis, with its revenue rising by 26 percent. With global DRAM market revenue down 14 percent compared to the third quarter of 2006, Hynix's performance truly stands out.