Samsung Electronics is on track to overtake SK Hynix as the world’s biggest DRAM seller for the October‑December quarter, according to industry insiders on Sunday. The company is expected to post a fourth‑quarter operating profit of more than 18 trillion won (about $12.2 billion), beating analysts’ forecasts, Yonhap News reports.
Its Device Solutions division, which runs the semiconductor arm, is projected to bring in roughly 15.1 trillion won of that profit—an astonishing year‑over‑year jump of 422 %. With this surprise earnings burst, Samsung should snap back to number one in global DRAM revenue, pushing SK Hynix to second place.
For 33 years Samsung led the DRAM market, but in the first quarter of this year it slipped behind SK Hynix, largely because it lagged the rival in high‑bandwidth memory (HBM) technology. SK Hynix pioneered HBM chips back in 2013, making them a key component for AI workloads, and has since dominated the HBM space.
Analysts say Samsung’s recent push to close the HBM gap, coupled with higher prices for standard DRAM driven by AI‑related infrastructure spending—like data‑center builds—has boosted its performance. The average price of 8‑gigabit DDR4 memory rose 15.7 % month‑over‑month to $8.10 in November, research firm DRAMeXchange notes. Prices have surged six times since March, when they were $1.35, and are expected to climb another 50 % in the fourth quarter versus the previous three months.
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