SAN FRANCISCO — Yangtze Memory Technologies secured 14 percent of worldwide NAND flash shipments in the second quarter, placing it third globally for the first time — surpassing Japan's Kioxia and U.S.-based Micron by volume, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research.
Samsung Electronics held the top position with 25 percent of global NAND shipments in the second quarter, down seven percentage points from 32 percent two years prior, as the company shifted production capacity toward higher-margin DRAM products.
SK Hynix ranked second with a 22 percent share, a figure that includes shipments from its subsidiary Solidigm. Solidigm's shipments rose 40 percent from the prior quarter.
YMTC's rise to the top three reflects a 22 percent increase in NAND shipments compared with the same period a year earlier and a five percent gain quarter-over-quarter. Analysts said YMTC expanded its market presence by capitalizing on tight global NAND supply.
Despite its third-place ranking by shipment volume, YMTC ranked fifth by revenue, trailing Micron and Kioxia because of its relatively low share in the enterprise solid-state drive segment, which commands premium pricing from data centers.
Demand for server eSSDs surged in the second quarter, driven by a rapid shift in artificial intelligence workloads from the training phase to inference — a stage that requires sustained, high-speed data storage and retrieval.
Server eSSDs comprised 48 percent of total NAND shipments in Q2, up 22 percentage points from 26 percent a year earlier. Revenue from server eSSDs hit a record, rising fivefold from the second quarter of last year.
Counterpoint Research projects server eSSDs will account for more than half of total NAND shipments by year-end.
For NAND manufacturers, profitability will increasingly depend on securing high-value eSSD sales rather than raw shipment volume — a market structure that favors incumbents with established data center relationships over pure commodity suppliers.
