Samsung, SK Hynix Hold Top Two in eSSD NAND Shipments as YMTC Ousts Kioxia From No. 3

eSSDs near half of all NAND bit shipments

Samsung leads in the second quarter

SK Hynix ranks second, 3 percentage points behind

YMTC takes third with a 14% share

As artificial intelligence demand shifts from training to inference, the structure of the NAND market is changing as well. Enterprise solid-state drives, or eSSDs, accounted for nearly half of total NAND bit shipments, with Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. holding the top two positions. China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., or YMTC, overtook Kioxia Holdings Corp. for the first time to rise to third place.

Counterpoint Research said on Aug. 13 that eSSDs accounted for 48% of total NAND bit shipments in the second quarter. That compares with 26% a year earlier, nearly doubling over the period.

The increase reflects stronger demand for server storage as AI inference expands. Demand is rising for fast, power-efficient storage of KV cache and datasets during inference, pushing the market toward higher-capacity, higher-performance products.

Server eSSDs are projected to account for more than half of all NAND bit shipments this year. Consumer products, by contrast, face supply shortages. As those shortages worsened, industry revenue surged fivefold from the second quarter of last year to a record high. Average selling prices for consumer products also climbed to an all-time high.

Samsung remained in first place with a 25% share based on bit shipments. Its share fell from 32%, however, as limited production capacity led the company to focus on higher-margin DRAM production.

SK Hynix ranked second with 22%. Expanded shipments from subsidiary Solidigm supported the performance. Solidigm’s NAND bit shipments rose 40% from the previous quarter.

YMTC was the standout. It captured a 14% share of shipments, narrowly surpassing Kioxia to claim third place for the first time. Its shipments rose 22% from a year earlier and 5% from the prior quarter.

YMTC has been expanding supplies to Chinese customers while mass-producing 267-layer 3D NAND. It is also developing NAND technology with more than 300 layers based on its Xtacking architecture.

Kioxia, which had ranked third in the previous quarter, supplies more than 30% of its shipments to servers. But higher server prices slowed customer purchases, and its growth rate trailed YMTC’s. Micron Technology Inc. was also among the top five by shipment volume.

Shipment rankings did not directly match revenue rankings. YMTC ranked third by shipments but only fifth by revenue. Its product mix remains concentrated in consumer products, while its share of higher-priced data-center eSSDs is still low. Micron and Kioxia both ranked ahead of YMTC by revenue.

YMTC plans to shift its product mix toward eSSDs in the second half of this year to solidify its No. 3 position. Expanded funding support in China is also expected to support that strategy.

Kim Dae-young, Hankyung.com reporter kdy@hankyung.com