In the global DRAM market Korean companies are the main suppliers across the world. According to iSuppli, a US market research and analysis company, Korea amounts for over half of the world's DRAM market. Currently, Samsung holds 33 percent of the world's market share, while domestic rival Hynix Co. holds 22 percent of the world's market share.
In the first quarter of 2010, Samsung's revenues in the DRAM industry were at USD 3.07 billion dollars, up 10 percent from the USD2.79 billion dollars in the 4th quarter of 2009. Meanwhile, Hynix's revenues were at 2.05 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2010, up 8.5 percent from the 1.89 billion US dollars from the 4th quarter of 2009.
However, it is being predicted that the market scale will decrease gradually until 2014. Even though the demand is continually rising, the prices are set to decrease. In this year, DRAM prices are set to decrease by 35 percent and will continue to do so until 2014. Due to the rise in demand, there are more investments into the DRAM industry. Last year's investments into DRAM totalled USD 10.1 billion dollars. This year though, investments into DRAM are expected to reach a total of USD 12.6 billion dollars. DRAM demand is on the rise, and Korean companies are pioneering the industry. The other top 3 companies trailing Samsung and Hynix are Elpida, Micron, and Powerchip. These top 5 companies amount to a total of 90.7 percent of the global DRAM market revenues.
