DRAM revenue rose 15.4% QoQ in 2Q20 to $17.1 billion, says TrendForce

However full inventories and slow orders from buyers of enterprise servers lead TrendForce to expect a flat Q3 in units ans a decline in ASPs.

Samsung, Hynix, and Micron, posted strong revenue results for 2Q20, while their respective market shares remained largely unchanged.

The DRAM market saw an increase in both prices and bit shipments, leading to a double-digit rise in revenue for the three suppliers.

On the other hand, the collective market share of suppliers outside the group of the top three came to just 5%.

Regarding the three leading suppliers’ revenue performances in 3Q20, TrendForce believes that Micron may be able to slightly raise its market share because it will adopt a more aggressive pricing policy in order to reach the targets for its fiscal year.

However, the existing oligopoly in the DRAM market is expected to remain as is without undergoing any significant changes.

All three had an increase in their operating margins in 2Q20 as the overall ASP rose by around 10%.

Samsung’s operating margin in 2Q20 reached  41% from 32% in 1Q20.

Hynix’s operating margin grew to 35% in 2Q20 and its  ASP rose sharply in 2Q20 because server DRAM comprises a large share of its product mix.

Micron’s operating margin came to 21% for its fiscal quarter from March to May, up from 16% in its previous fiscal quarter.

Micron had the smallest increase in ASP among the top three suppliers, so the gain in its operating margin was relatively modest as well.

In 3Q20, the leading suppliers are expected to struggle with profitability. Although they have been optimizing their cost structures, their progress in this area will unlikely be sufficient to compensate for the decline in their ASPs.