Stand-alone memory market’s high growth will moderate, says Yole
The stand-alone memory component market will exceed $200 billion in 2022, with the market growing year-on-year by 25 percent. according to Yole Developpement.
The market is dominated by DRAM and NAND flash, which represent more than 95 percent of the market, according to Yole’s Status of the memory industry report. NOR flash, FRAM, EPROM, ROM, and emerging non-volatile memory including phase change memory all register small percentage sales.
The DRAM market is expected to be worth $118 billion in 2022, up 25 percent. The NAND flash market is expected to be worth $83 billion in 2022, up 24 percent. The 25 percent annual growth comes after 15 percent and 32 percent in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
Slower growth to come
However, this period of extreme growth period is temporary high point. Over the longer term the stand-alone memory market will keep growing with a compound annual growth rate over the period 2021 to 2027 of 8 percent. This will bring the stand-alone memory market to an annual value of $260 billlion in 2027 although cyclicality will remain, Yole said.
At present DRAM expansion is planar but the use of EUV is expensive. To reduce the cost per bit the market is expected to move towards 3D-DRAM (see Huawei proposes vertical transistor for 3D-DRAM). Yole expects 3D-DRAM to enter the market in 2029 or 2030. Until then stacked die approaches are likely to gain ground. These include such developments as the high bandwidth memory HBM3+ standard.
The China market has resolved itself to two major players – CXMT in DRAM and YMTC in NAND flash memory. Yole reckons that YMTC is competing with market leaders and could gain market share through domestic sales. It could have 10 percent of global NAND wafer production in 2027. CXMT could also progress but even if it halved the technology gap by 2027 it would still be 3 or 4 years behind the market leaders, Yole said.
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