Micron Technology captured a 9.4% share of the global NAND flash market in 2009, exceeding Hynix Semiconductor's share by 0.3pp points. Samsung Electronics and Toshiba continued to rank as the top-two vendors for the year, with their combined share reaching 72.1%.
The joint Micron/Intel team recently announced plans to mass produce 25nm NAND flash devices in the second quarter of 2010, leading rivals in advanced process technology. Industry watchers believe the breakthrough will help the alliance grow their 2010 market share.
Hynix, which fell out of the global top-three NAND flash vendors in 2009, kicked off volume production using 32nm in early 2010, the watchers said. It began to mass produce NAND flash using 40nm-class processes in the second half of 2009. Micron is already at 34nm production.
Micron moved up to number three in the third quarter of 2009, and retained its position after Toshiba and Samsung in the fourth. However, Hynix managed to expand its share by 1.1pp to 9.8% in the fourth quarter, narrowing its gap with Micron, the research firm noted.
Hynix, which encountered problems to fund its process migration earlier in 2009, doubled its supply of NAND flash based on 41nm and 48nm in the second half of the year, according to previous reports.