Samsung Wears the Q3 DRAM Crown, but SK hynix Is Closing the Gap

By Mike Harvey · Memory, storage and the data infrastructure behind AI

The third-quarter DRAM revenue lead belongs to Samsung, and SK hynix is narrowing the distance behind it, Businesskorea reports.

Attached to that lead is a number: 38 percent. GuruFocus puts Samsung's share of the global DRAM market at that level. The figure reaches readers through GuruFocus, and the research firm or company that produced it is unconfirmed, as is the exact period it covers and whether it measures revenue or bits.

Provenance is not a footnote in memory share tables. A share figure can only be set against another one from the same counter using the same method, so a specialist lining this 38 percent up against a prior quarter needs the name of the tracker first.

Two headlines on the same quarter pull in different directions. Businesskorea's has Samsung leading "Amid SK hynix Closing In." A second GuruFocus headline says Samsung "Dominates DRAM Market in Q3" and adds "Revenue Soars."

Those are not the same story. If the 38 percent describes the third quarter, then 62 percent of the market sits with suppliers other than Samsung. That is a lead. Dominates is a headline writer's verb, and a rival closing in is the opposite of what the word implies.

Read together, the headlines would describe a quarter in which the leader's revenue rose and the runner-up's rose faster. How much Samsung's DRAM revenue grew, and whether the comparison is with the prior quarter or the prior year, is unconfirmed. So is the size of the gap SK hynix has left to close.

Businesskorea's ranking is by revenue, and that basis deserves attention too. Revenue share moves with price and product mix as well as volume, which means a supplier can gain or lose ground in a revenue ranking without any change in the bits it ships. A lead built on pricing behaves differently from one built on output when contract prices turn, and which kind Samsung holds is unconfirmed.

One figure would settle the argument between the two framings: SK hynix's share for the same quarter, from the same counter. Set next to 38 percent, it would show whether Samsung has a cushion or a margin of error.