Samsung Electronics achieved a significant profit recovery in the first quarter of 2024, mainly due to the recovery of its key semiconductor business and strong sales of the Galaxy S24 smartphone.
Samsung Electronics, the world's leading memory chip maker, recently released preliminary data showing that its operating profit reached about 6.6 trillion won (equivalent to $4.9 billion), a year-on-year surge of 931.3%, far exceeding analysts' expectations of 5.37 trillion won, which ended a consecutive quarterly profit decline since the third quarter of 2022.
The memory chip industry has a cycle of about 3-4 years, and it is currently at the beginning of the fifth cycle. Since 2000, the cyclical nature of the memory industry has become more pronounced, and innovation in consumer electronics has played an important role in driving the overall demand for memory chips.
With the outbreak of a new wave of AI around the world, the demand for servers and computing power is strong, and the storage market will also usher in an accelerated recovery in 2024.
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Sorting out the memory chip industry chain
Memory chips, also known as memory, are semiconductor devices that use electrical energy to store information, and are widely used in memory, USB flash drives, consumer electronics, smart terminals and other fields.
Memory chips are one of the most widely used basic products in integrated circuits with the highest market share, and their position in the semiconductor industry is prominent.
According to the category, memory chips can be divided into two categories: volatile memory chips and non-volatile memory chips.
Volatile memory chips are commonly used in DRAM and SRAM, which are usually used with the CPU to provide storage for intermediate data during computation.
Non-volatile storage technology ensures that data is kept safe and not lost even if the computer is shut down or accidentally shut down due to unexpected circumstances.
Non-volatile memory can be further subdivided into EEPROM and Flash. Flash can be divided into two categories: NOR Flash and NAND Flash.
DRAM and NAND Flash memory together account for more than 97% of the market.
Classification of memory chips:
The upstream of the memory chip industry chain includes suppliers of semiconductor materials such as silicon wafers, photoresists, targets, polishing materials, and electronic special gases, as well as suppliers of semiconductor equipment such as lithography machines, PVD, CVD, etching equipment, cleaning equipment, and packaging and testing equipment. The downstream of the industrial chain mainly includes consumer electronics, automotive electronics, information communication, artificial intelligence and other application fields.
From the perspective of business model, the storage industry is mainly divided into IDM model and vertical division of labor model.
The IDM model refers to the company's business covering all aspects of IC design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, and is adopted by most international memory chip manufacturers and domestic Yangtze River Storage and Changxin Storage.
The vertical division of labor model splits the industry chain, including Fabless (i.e., fabless manufacturing design companies), foundry (wafer foundries) and OSAT (packaging and testing companies).
Diagram of memory chip manufacturing industry chain:
Source: GigaDevice, Donghai Securities
At the same time, independent memory vendors (also known as third-party module vendors) have emerged to meet the diverse needs of the market. Memory interface chips are an integral part of DRAM memory modules (i.e., storage media) that provide the underlying hardware support for AI and cloud computing applications.
The competition pattern and leading combing of the memory chip industry
The global memory chip market is highly concentrated, with major players including Samsung and SK hynix in South Korea, Micron and Western Digital in the United States, and Kioxia in Japan.
The leading domestic enterprises mainly include Yangtze River Storage, Changxin Storage, SMIC, GigaDevice and so on.
The supply of DRAM market is mainly in the hands of Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, and Changxin Storage is the main DRAM wafer producer in China.
In the field of NAND Flash, the world's main enterprises with production capacity are Samsung, Kioxia, Western Digital, Micron, SK hynix and Intel, etc., and the domestic manufacturer YMTC is the main domestic substitution.
In the NOR Flash market, Winbond topped the list, followed by Macronix, and GigaDevice ranked third. #存储芯片##芯片##半导体##人工智能##科技##财经#
In addition, key domestic memory chip enterprises also include Ziguang Guowei, Beijing Junzheng, Montage Technology, Juchen Co., Ltd., Guoke Micro, Longsys, Demingli, Shannon Xinchuang and Fudan Microelectronics.
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