Samsung Quietly Prepared for 10 Years, Finally Reaches the Top... Surpasses US Giant to Become 'World No. 1'

Achieved 40% Market Share Last Year
Driven by Early Entry into China and Supply of Semiconductors for Autonomous Vehicles

Samsung Electronics has reclaimed the number one position in global automotive memory semiconductor market share for the first time, surpassing Micron of the United States.

Yonhap News Agency

According to S&P Global Mobility, an automotive industry analysis firm, Samsung Electronics' market share in the automotive memory sector rose to 40% last year, while Micron's fell to 36%, resulting in a reversal of their rankings.

This achievement is attributed to Samsung Electronics' focused strategy targeting high-growth markets such as China with its lineup of premium advanced products, including low-power DRAM (LPDDR) and Universal Flash Storage (UFS), in response to the expansion of autonomous driving systems and the advancement of in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems.

In the past, the automotive memory market was considered to have high entry barriers and low added value within the memory industry, as product replacement cycles were long—about seven to eight years—and durability and reliability were prioritized over performance. However, with the recent surge in demand for autonomous driving systems and high-performance IVI, competition for high-capacity and high-performance memory has intensified.

Samsung Electronics LPDDR5X product image. Photo by Samsung Electronics, Yonhap News Agency

Samsung Electronics made a full-fledged entry into the automotive semiconductor market in 2015 by introducing low-power memory solutions such as LPDDR and UFS. Since then, it has accelerated its efforts to capture the global premium market by proactively mass-producing automotive solid-state drives (SSD) and graphic DRAM (GDDR). As a result, the company is reported to have achieved an annual average sales growth rate of more than 40% in the automotive memory sector from 2020 to 2025.

Going forward, Samsung Electronics plans to maintain its top global position by leveraging its lineup of high-performance DRAM, including LPDDR5X and LPDDR5, high-reliability memory products that meet the automotive reliability quality standard 'AEC-Q100', as well as next-generation V-NAND-based automotive SSDs.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.