Samsung remains the world’s largest memory chip maker

Samsung‘s semiconductor business has been running at a loss lately. The company reported losses of almost $7 billion from the chip division in the first half of 2023 due to a sharp decline in the prices of memory chips. However, thanks to it being an industry-wide slowdown, its market share has hardly dropped. Samsung retained its crown as the world’s largest memory chip maker in the first quarter of the year.

According to a Yonhap News Agency report, which cites data from research firm Omdia, Samsung captured about 42.8 percent of the global DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) market in Q1 2023. The figure is pretty much unchanged from the previous quarter, i.e. Q4 2022. The company also held on to the top spot in the NAND flash market, marginally increasing its share to 34.3 percent.

However, as expected, Samsung’s revenue dropped amid sluggish sales. It generated about $4.01 billion from DRAM sales between January and March of this year. In comparison, its memory chip business generated a revenue of $10.35 billion during the same period in 2022. This means the DRAM revenue dropped over 60 percent year-on-year (YoY) in the first quarter of 2023. It’s also a 25 percent quarterly decline from the year-ending quarter of 2022.

It’s a similar story in the NAND flash market as well. Samsung saw its revenue more than halved from $6.33 billion in Q1 2022 to $2.99 billion in Q1 2023. As said earlier, the Korean behemoth suffered losses from the chip business in the first two quarters of 2023. It reported losses of KRW 4.58 trillion (approx. $3.5 billion) in Q1 and KRW 4.36 trillion (approx. $3.3 billion) in Q1, totaling a loss of about $6.8 billion in the first half of the year.

Samsung compatriot SK Hynix is also hit by the memory chip downturn

Samsung isn’t the only one suffering from the sharp decline in the prices of memory chips in recent months. As said earlier, it’s an industry-wide downturn, so all involved are feeling the heat. This includes Samsung’s compatriot SK Hynix. Its DRAM market share declined from 27.2 percent in Q4 2022 to 24.7 percent in Q1 2023. As a result, it conceded the second spot to Idaho, US-based Micron Technology.

SK Hynix also lost a spot in the NAND flash market, dropping to fourth place with a share of 16.8 percent in the first quarter of the year. Like Samsung, it has also suffered big losses from the chip business this year. Samsung expects the market to move toward stability in the second half of the year. It remains to be seen whether its chip division will return to profitability by the end of 2023.