With the memory crisis in full swing, it’s taking severe chunks out of the supplies of both NAND (used for SSD storage) and DRAM, which is used for RAM modules. Chinese memory maker YMTC has had a lucrative couple of years with the former, yet it’s not done yet. YMTC reportedly wants to sit at the very top of the pile for NAND flash memory, and it wants to do it very soon.
According to the Financial Times, citing “two people with knowledge of the matter”, YMTC told investors that it wants to be the leader in the market (ahead of Samsung and SK hynix) by the end of 2027. That’s a pretty bold claim considering it would need to more than double its current market share.
According to Counterpoint Research, YMTC holds a 13% market share, while NAND memory leader Samsung holds 29%. In fairness, though, YMTC does appear to be building up its infrastructure to handle growth.
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In April, it was reported that YMTC was aiming to more than double its wafer production. It would do so by building two additional foundries and finishing the build of a third foundry that was already under construction.
NAND memory is a very lucrative business right now. In the first quarter of 2026, NAND flash memory makers earned $46 billion in revenue, which is over 3.5 times what they made in the same quarter last year. NAND memory is only getting more expensive, and data centers are mopping it all up to train AIs and store all that data. But YMTC has even had a win in the consumer market, seemingly putting its SSDs into some Lenovo laptops. That’s something it may have struggled to do previously, if it weren’t for memory and storage supplies being so limited.
YMTC is reportedly also planning to make moves in the DRAM memory market, but it has CXMT, a different Chinese memory brand, to compete with there. CXMT has managed to pull in a 7% market share in the memory business, which isn’t loads compared to the 39% held by Samsung, the 26% SK hynix has, and the 26% that Micron currently enjoys, but is quickly and steadily increasing.
It seems like China has two major memory manufacturers coming more decidedly into the global market, and given their surprisingly substantial market shares, they’re coming in swinging.
As for the SSDs that you and I may put in our PCs, the market is looking mighty rough. We round up the best cheap SSD deals every week, and a 2 TB drive will cost you at least $200 right now.
More supply is obviously a good way of tackling the memory crisis, but one has to hope the supply goes up at a quicker rate than the already substantial demand, or we won’t see any of the benefit of this heightened memory production. Even Samsung reckons we’re in for a ‘severe‘ memory supply crisis next year, so things are looking bleak at least in the short-to-medium term.
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