Research: Estimated 2017 DRAM market sales increased 74% | to 72 billion US dollars

Back in 2017, with the increasing demand for DRAM in the data center server field, smart phones and other mobile products, DRAM manufacturers are facing pressure from the increase in production capacity and the average selling price of DRAM is also on the rise. As Figure 1 shows, DRAM sales in the fourth quarter of 2017 are expected to increase to a record high of US $ 21.1 billion, up 65% from US $ 12.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Figure 1 2015Q1-2017Q4 DRAM quarterly revenue

IC Insights expects DRAM sales to reach US $ 72 billion for the full year of 2017 with an annual growth rate of 74%, the best record in history since 1993 (78% annual growth in 1994), as compared with 1993 - The 13% annual average growth rate in 2017 was 61 percentage points higher, the fourth time since 1993 that sales exceeded 50%, and the last annual growth rate of 67% dates back to 2010.

In conclusion, IC Insights pointed out that the DRAM growth rate in the fourth quarter of this year is close to the all time high due to the following reasons: (1) the expansion plan of main fabs can not keep pace with the market demand and thus lead to short supply; (2) products with ≤ 20nm advanced process still exist Yield issues; the market demand for high-performance (graphics) DRAM in gaming systems and data centers is on the rise; and DRAM capacity in every smartphone is on the rise.

Figure 2 In the smart phone market, the demand for multitasking and high-speed, low-cost data space continues to increase, resulting in a rapid increase in DRAM capacity per cell phone. For example, Apple's iPhone 8 uses 2GB of iPhone X Using 3GB of DRAM. Samsung Galaxy S8 DRAM is 4G, the Chinese version even expanded to 6GB. More than Samsung, Huawei P10 and HTC U11 also uses 6GB of DRAM, mainly from Singapore, mainly known as video game equipment Razer and a plus 5 more using 8GB of DRAM.

With virtual reality and augmented reality, and artificial intelligence breakthrough to become the next round smartphone applications, DRAM capacity high-end smart phones are likely to continue to increase. At the same time, in some developing countries, is experiencing from the functional to the first machine the transition period a smart machine, using DRAM has not risen from 1GB capacity.

From a historical point of view, DRAM can not all the way up in the next 1-2 years with the rising prices and capacity expansion, DRAM annual growth rate is likely to decline again.Samsung and SK hynix in the second half of 2017 The announcement shows that the gradual opening of new capacity will ease the upward trend of the average selling price of DRAM Samsung will hit an unprecedented 26 billion US dollars in semiconductor capital in 2017 and SK hynix plans to add a new production line in Wuxi Recently, Micron and Intel announced that the expansion of its IM Flash B60 fab has been completed and will be responsible for the production of 3D XPoint memory in the future, but there is still some time to go into production.