The global smartphone memory market posted revenue of growth of more than 20 percent, clocking revenue of $51 Billion in 2021 according to Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technology Service Report, Smartphone Memory Market Share Q4 2021: Samsung Leads While SK Hynix Sees Growth.

Strategy Analytics research notes that the early year momentum saw the memory market shifting from oversupply to meeting the growing memory demand among customers. Driven by the 5G uptake, Smartphone OEMs shifted to higher NAND and DRAM specifications. This resulted in strong revenue and volume growth for memory vendors. The market was dominated by Samsung with 47 percent revenue share followed by SK Hynix and Micron. The top 3 vendors captured almost 85 percent revenue share in 2021.

NAND Market

• The total smartphone NAND flash market revenue grew by 26 percent YoY owing to the shipment of high-density MCP products.
• Samsung captured 40.3 percent revenue share followed by Kioxia with 21.1 percent and SK Hynix with 20.6 percent in the smartphone NAND market in 2021.
• UFS NAND Flash shipment exceeded 50 percent unit share driven by the strong demand for uMCP products. Moreover, NAND with UFS 3.1 interface segment also crossed 10 percent unit share for the first time.
• Smartphone NAND bit shipments grew by 26 percent YoY.

DRAM Market

• The DRAM market for smartphones managed revenue growth of 24 percent YoY as customer demand for high-density DRAM peaked.
• In terms of market share, Samsung captured 53 percent followed by SK Hynix with 26 percent and Micron with 20 percent in the smartphone DRAM market in 2021.
• LPDDR5 DRAM unit penetration exceeded 8 percent on the back of increasing 5G device specifications.
• Smartphone DRAM bit shipments up 29 percent YoY.

Source: Strategy Analytics HCT Service (March 2022)

Questions

• Going into 2022, how will the component shortages induced weakness in smartphone production affect memory demand?
• What will be the impact of rising BOM on memory content growth?
• Which memory vendor is positioned strongly in terms of share gain?

Strategy Analytics’ Handset Component Technology service covers the smartphone memory market.  Clients can discover research covering the memory market and more here. Please reach out for any inquiry directly, linkedin or twitter.