EETimes' Junko Yoshida just published an article titled “5 reasons why Samsung scares Japan” (http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225200248) that discusses five major reasons why Samsung has become the manufacturing powerhouse that it is today. There’s no question that in semiconductor memory, Samsung is a true industry leader. According to DRAMeXchange, Samsung was the dominant player in semiconductor DRAM, with a 32.3% market share in 1Q2010, and the company held an even more dominant position in NAND Flash during the same period, with a 38.3% market share. (During this same period, Hynix was the #2 DRAM player with a 21.5% market share and Toshiba was the #2 NAND Flash player with a 32.4% market share, again according to DRAMeXchange.)

Without a doubt, Samsung currently holds an impressive lead in semiconductor memory manufacturing—at least from a market-share perspective. Further, as the last part of Yoshida’s article discusses, Samsung’s announced plans to more than double its capital expenditures this year versus 2009 are clearly aimed at keeping Samsung in the lead.

Not so coincidentally, Samsung is giving a keynote at MemCon 2010, being held on July 28. Register here: https://www.denali.com/en/memcon/2010/

To see the DRAMeXchange 1Q2010 DRAM vendor ranking, go here: http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/2358.html

To see the DRAMeXchange 1Q2010 NAND Flash vendor ranking, go here: http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/2365.html