South Korean media: China's memory semiconductor industry is also rising!
On December 23, the South Korean media "Etoday" published an article stating that Chinese memory semiconductor companies Changjiang Memory and Longjing Memory are rapidly launching new generations of NAND flash memory and high-performance DRAM, significantly accelerating their technological catch-up in the global memory market. With rapid improvements in key specifications such as layers and speed, both companies are expanding their market share. In addition, despite restrictions from U.S. equipment regulations, Chinese companies are continuously improving yield rates and capacity, which is expected to bring increasingly intense competitive pressure on South Korean, American, and Japanese memory manufacturers in the medium to long term.
According to reports, the output share of the Chinese NAND flash memory manufacturer Changjiang Memory exceeded 10% for the first time in the first quarter of this year, reaching 13% in the third quarter. The 270-layer 3D NAND flash memory that Changjiang Memory has started mass production of has significantly narrowed the technical gap with leading manufacturers in terms of stacked layers.
Changjiang Memory aims to achieve a global shipment share of 15% by the end of next year. Once the new factory currently under construction near Wuhan is completed, Changjiang Memory's global supply share is expected to increase to about 20%.
In this context, Changjiang Memory will surpass Kioxia and even catch up with SK Hynix, which currently holds a market share of 31.9%. The price of Chinese-made NAND flash memory is 10% to 20% lower than that of its competitors, which is also considered a key factor in market expansion.
Longjing Memory, the DRAM manufacturer, is also simultaneously enhancing its technology and market share. According to reports, Longjing Memory's global DRAM market share has risen from 6% to 8%. With accelerated R&D work on general DDR products and increased application rates of memory products in the domestic market, Longjing Memory's market influence is also growing.
At a recent semiconductor exhibition held in China, Longjing Memory launched DDR5 memory products, which attracted widespread attention in the industry. The company announced that its 16GB and 24GB DDR5 memory can reach a maximum operating speed of 8000Mbps. This speed exceeds Samsung Electronics' DDR5 memory speed of 7200Mbps, and analysts concluded that the speed gap between Longjing Memory's DDR5 and Samsung's DDR5 has been significantly narrowed.
However, considering that high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is a key component in the AI server and graphics processing unit (GPU) markets, Chinese enterprises still have limited competitiveness.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have already completed the development of the next-generation HBM4 (sixth generation), while Longjing Memory is expected to remain at the third generation (HBM2E) level, facing a gap of approximately 4 to 5 years compared to global leaders.
Analysts predict that in the fields of general DRAM and NAND flash memory, Chinese enterprises are catching up at a faster pace than expected, mainly due to price competitiveness, strong domestic demand, and strong government support. Although they still lag behind other countries in high-value-added HBM memory, this indicates that the global general memory market structure may undergo significant changes within a few years.
Original: toutiao.com/article/1852288484410378/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author themselves.