DRAM market surges 81% on AI inference shift as Samsung cements global No. 1 spot

Samsung Electronics has solidified its position as the world's top DRAM maker in the first quarter, leveraging the industry's largest production capacity amid a deepening supply-demand imbalance driven by the global spread of AI.

According to market research firm TrendForce, global DRAM sales reached $97 billion (about 146.3 trillion won) in the first quarter, up 81 percent from the previous quarter. The surge came as AI applications evolved from large language model training toward inference, spreading data center server demand among cloud service providers from AI-dedicated hardware to general-purpose servers.

That shift drove broad-based demand across a wide range of products — from fifth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM3E) and low-power double data rate 5X (LPDDR5X) to high-capacity RDIMMs in various configurations.

Among the top three global memory chip makers, Samsung posted the largest increase in average selling price and the highest share of server DRAM sales, a more profitable segment. Samsung's first-quarter DRAM sales rose 93.4 percent from the prior quarter to $37.32 billion, with its market share expanding 2.5 percentage points to 38.5 percent.

Second-ranked SK Hynix posted sales of $27.98 billion over the same period, up 62.5 percent from the previous quarter. Its market share slipped 3.3 percentage points to 28.8 percent, widening the gap with Samsung from 3.9 percentage points in the fourth quarter of last year to 9.7 percentage points in the first quarter. TrendForce noted that SK Hynix had the highest share of HBM shipments among the top three suppliers, but a decline in HBM contract prices this year partially limited its overall average selling price gains.

Third-place Micron recorded sales of $21.75 billion, up 81.6 percent from the prior quarter, with its market share holding steady at 22.4 percent.

The second-quarter outlook is also positive. TrendForce expects DRAM supplier inventories to remain extremely low through the second quarter. With capacity expansion options limited, cloud service providers have increasingly accepted price increases, prompting other customers to follow suit in securing supply. TrendForce projects contract prices for general-purpose DRAM will rise an additional 58 to 63 percent in the second quarter from the prior quarter.