SK hynix narrows gap with Samsung in NAND flash sector

South Korea's No. 2 chipmaker SK hynix Inc. saw its share of the NAND flash market rise in the fourth quarter of 2014 from three months earlier, narrowing its gap with industry leader Samsung Electronics Co., data showed Sunday.

SK hynix saw its market share reach 11.4 percent in the October-December period, up 1.1 percentage points from the 10.3 percent posted a quarter earlier, the data by market tracker TrendForce showed.

In contrast, Samsung saw its shares fall 1.8 percentage points over the cited period to 27.9 percent.

NAND flash memory chips are used in smartphones, tablet PCs and other mobile devices to save data when the devices are turned off.

Japan-based Toshiba Corp. ranked at second with 21.9 percent, down from the 22.6 percent posted over the July-September period of 2014. SanDisk Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. held 18.2 percent and 13.7 percent, respectively, for the fourth quarter.

"The rapid increase of the 16nm production ration also gave SK hynix an operating margin boost. All these indicate that the performance of SK hynix's NAND flash division is recovering after reaching the bottom," the researcher said.

"The NAND flash market will see oversupply in the first quarter of 2015 due to the seasonality of demand. As price decline becomes more noticeable, NAND flash vendors are expected to speed up technology migration to improve cost structure and minimize the impact of falling prices," added Sean Yang, Assistant Vice President of DRAMeXchange. (Yonhap)