Anything but a surprise, the leaders of the RAM world are turning away from DDR4 for more profitable products.
In May 2024 - yes, less than a year ago - Samsung and SK Hynix had almost simultaneously announced the end of DDR3 chip production. The two South Korean companies are the market leaders in DRAM, followed by the American Micron. This trio accounts for over 80% of the global DRAM market, but they are about to turn away from what was not so long ago the most modern RAM for our PCs, DDR4. Things have moved much faster than for DDR3, and Samsung - the first to do so - has just announced that DDR4 production will soon be discontinued, " before the end of 2025 " if we are to believe the company's words relayed by the Tom's Hardware site.
With DDR5 taking over from DDR4, DDR4 is becoming increasingly unprofitable for the three DRAM giants, and Samsung has indicated that it prefers to focus on the production of DDR5 and, above all, HBM. HBM - an acronym for High Bandwidth Memory - is on a roll, as the explosion of the artificial intelligence market has boosted the need for fast memory. AI is the main market for this HBM, but Samsung is just jumping on the bandwagon, while the other South Korean major - SK Hynix - has jumped on with more energy: it currently holds almost 70% of the market.
On the other side of the spectrum, Samsung also faces competition from Chinese companies, the main reason why DDR4 is no longer as profitable as it once was. Companies such as ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Fujian Jinhua are reported to have slashed prices by up to 50% compared with the three market leaders. As a result, CXMT has considerably increased its production to 200,000 DDR4 wafers per month, and is set to increase this further to 300,000 wafers per month before the end of the year. Given that CXMT is reportedly about to launch into DDR5, Samsung's troubles in this sector don't seem to be over.
