Samsung extends its lead in the NAND flash storage market

Samsung Electronics ranked first in the NAND flash market, while Toshiba stood second with a market share of 18.6 percent during the last quarter of last year. SanDisk, with a market share of 15.8 percent, stood third. Micron Technology Inc. stood fourth in the NAND flash market with a market share of 13.9 percent. SK Hynix Inc. with a market share of 10.1 percent and Intel with market share of 8 percent, ranked fifth and sixth, respectively.

Even though Toshiba introduced NAND flash technology in 1989, its current market share is less than half of Samsung's. In the third quarter of 2015, Samsung had a market share of 31.5 percent and Toshiba had a market share of 20.5 percent. However, Samsung's sales grew 4.2 percent, while Toshiba's sales dropped by 11.3 percent during Q4, 2015.

In its latest report, DRAMeXchange said, “The NAND flash market showed a minus growth of 2.3 percent due to the depression in the mobile demand industry. However, Samsung was one of the few manufacturers that experienced revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2015. Other competitors are now facing pressures of the fall in unit prices and technology advance bottlenecks.”