Recent considerations over market circumstances, coupled with a pointy downturn in common promoting costs, will lead the DRAM market to succeed in simply US$77 billion in 2019 – a 22% year-over-year decline. Falling costs and weak demand will probably proceed by means of the third quarter of 2019, based on IHS Markit.
“The recent decision announced by Micron Technologies to cut memory chip output, in the face of stalling demand is not surprising,” mentioned Rachel Young, affiliate director at IHS Markit. “In truth, most reminiscence chip manufactures are taking measures to handle provide output and stock ranges, to handle softening demand.
Supply-and-demand development will stay within the 20% vary within the coming years, holding the market usually balanced, IHS indicated. However, some intervals of oversupply and undersupply are anticipated, with servers and cell units main the demand classes.
In the long term, robust demand for server DRAM particularly from Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba and different hyperscale firms means the server phase will develop from about 28% of bit demand in 2018 to over 50% of bit demand in 2023, IHS famous.
Smartphone unit shipments and content material development have slowed considerably since 2016, however smartphones rank because the second largest DRAM consumption phase, IHS continued. An common of 28% of total DRAM bit demand will come from smartphones between 2019 and 2023.
Samsung continued to guide the business in DRAM quantity, however the hole was smaller within the fourth quarter of 2018, based on IHS. Samsung has launched a first-quarter 2019 earnings warning, as it’s confronted with a difficult semiconductor setting, notably by way of DRAM pricing pressures. Still, within the fourth quarter of 2018, Samsung loved an 8pp market-share lead over SK Hynix, and a 16pp lead over Micron, IHS mentioned.
