Japan's Elpida narrows gap with Samsung, Hynix in chip market share

By Lee Youkyung
SEOUL, Feb. 4 (Yonhap) -- Elpida Memory Inc., the world's third-largest memory
chipmaker, widened its share of the global market in the last three months of
2009, narrowing the gap with South Korean chipmakers, industry data showed
Thursday.
Japan's biggest computer memory chipmaker, which drags behind South Korea's
Samsung Electronics Co. and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. in the dynamic random access
memory (DRAM) market, claimed a market share of 19.4 percent in the three months
to December, according to DRAMeXchange, the operator of Asia's biggest
semiconductor spot market.
Elpida's third quarter market share, by comparison, was 16.8 percent. DRAM chips
are used for personal computers and servers.
Hynix's market share remained flat over the cited period at 21.6 percent, while
Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of DRAM, lost 3.9 percentage
points from three months earlier to 31.7 percent.
Elpida logged its first quarterly profit in over two years in December thanks to
a recovery in chip prices and revived demand for personal computers, posing a
bigger threat to the South Korean DRAM makers, analysts said. Its fourth-quarter
net income stood at 21.05 billion yen (US$233.8 million), a turnaround from a
loss in the previous quarter.
The company also significantly increased its operating margin, the ratio of
operating income to sales, to 20 percent in the October-December period of last
year -- up 1 percentage point from three months earlier.
"The improvement in (Elpida's) earnings seem to have derived from the
industrywide recovery and improved productivity," Park Hyun, an analyst at
Prudential Investment & Securities, said in a report released on Friday.
Hynix posted a 25 percent operating margin, while Samsung logged 21.2 percent.
Samsung said low-profit businesses such as its hard disk drive unit, which is
under its semiconductor division, drove down its operating margin.
Analysts also attributed the declining market share of South Korean DRAM makers
to the rise of Taiwanese and U.S. memory manufacturers.
U.S.-based Micron Technology Inc., the world's fourth-largest DRAM maker, claimed
12.2 percent of the market in the fourth quarter, up about 1 percentage point.
Taiwanese chipmakers also slightly pushed up their market shares.
ylee@yna.co.kr
(END)