Samsung vs SK hynix: How 2 Korean Firms Own 70% of DRAM
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Related video: "SK hynix Stock: The AI Memory Boom Could Be a Trap" (via Money Uncovered)
If you searched for "Korean semiconductor companies," the honest answer is short: there are two that matter globally — Samsung Electronics and SK hynix — plus a supporting cast of smaller equipment and materials suppliers.
But here's the part most Western coverage skips. Korea does not dominate "chips" in general. It dominates one category of chips: memory, the chips that store data.
Taiwan's TSMC dominates the manufacturing of logic chips (the ones that do the calculating), and American firms like Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel dominate chip design. Korea owns the memory lane of that highway, and it owns it almost completely.
That distinction explains nearly everything else about Korea's chip industry — including how two companies from a country of roughly 52 million people ended up with a near-monopoly on something every phone, laptop and AI data center on the planet needs.
What Samsung's chip business actually is
The biggest misconception: Samsung is not a chip company. Samsung is a chaebol — a Korean family-controlled conglomerate — founded in 1938 and sprawling across dozens of businesses. Under the Samsung name you'll find Samsung Heavy Industries (shipbuilding), Samsung C&T (trading and construction), Samsung Life Insurance, Samsung SDS (IT services) and Cheil Worldwide (advertising).
So the group that made your phone may well have built the ship that carried it across the ocean, and insured the people who loaded it.
The chip work happens inside Samsung Electronics, which entered semiconductors in 1974 by acquiring Hankook Semiconductor, with its VLSI chip business starting in 1983. Today that division splits three ways:
- Memory — DRAM and NAND flash. This is the crown jewel and the profit engine.
- System LSI — designing chips for computing, connectivity, power management and security. (Think mobile processors.)
- Foundry — manufacturing chips that other companies designed, on contract. Samsung entered foundry in 2005 and made it a standalone third division in 2017.
Here's the blunt assessment: the non-memory half has struggled. Samsung's internal Management Diagnosis Office has reportedly been reviewing the System LSI design division, with the foundry business said to be next in line — a rare public signal that a business this important isn't performing to expectations.
Chairman Lee Jae-yong has made non-memory a long-term priority for years, and the gap with the industry leader has yet to close. That's not a news blip; it's a structural weakness worth knowing about.
What SK hynix is — and no, it's not owned by Samsung
SK hynix is a completely separate company inside a completely separate chaebol, the SK Group. Its largest shareholder is SK Square, an investment company spun off from SK Telecom, which holds roughly 20% of shares.
Unlike Samsung, SK hynix is close to a pure memory play. Roughly 60–70% of its revenue comes from DRAM and 30–35% from NAND. As of 2024 it was the world's second-largest supplier in both categories, at about 33% DRAM share and 21% NAND share.
That NAND position was bought, not grown: SK hynix jumped from fourth place to second after acquiring Intel's NAND business in a deal completed in stages from 2021.
Being a near-pure memory company is a double-edged sword. When memory prices crash, SK hynix has nothing to cushion the fall. When memory booms — as it did with AI — it captures the upside far more directly than Samsung, whose earnings are diluted by TVs, phones and appliances.
A plain-English chip glossary
- DRAM — short-term working memory. It's what a computer uses while it's thinking. Turn the power off, and it forgets.
- NAND flash — long-term storage. Your photos live here. It remembers with the power off.
- HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) — DRAM chips stacked vertically to move enormous amounts of data at once. This is the memory AI accelerators need, and it sells at a significant premium.
- Foundry — a factory-for-hire that manufactures chips other companies designed. TSMC is the world's biggest.
- Chaebol — a large, family-controlled Korean business group spanning unrelated industries.
The 2025 power shift: SK hynix passed Samsung
This is the story that defined the decade for Korean chips. More than a year on, it's worth revisiting as history rather than treating it as breaking news.
Driven by the HBM boom, SK hynix overtook Samsung in the global DRAM business for the first time in Q1 2025, according to Counterpoint Research. It wasn't a fluke quarter — by most industry tallies the company held the No.1 DRAM spot for three consecutive quarters.
| Metric | SK hynix | Samsung | Micron (US) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2025 DRAM revenue share | ~36% | ~34% | ~25% |
| Q3 2025 DRAM revenue share | ~35% (3rd straight quarter at No.1) | — | — |
| Q1 2025 operating profit change (YoY) | +158% (HBM-driven) | — | — |
| 2024 NAND share | ~21% (No.2) | No.1 | — |
Then came the symbolic blow. In 2025, SK hynix passed Samsung Electronics at the top of the KOSPI market-cap ranking — reportedly the first change at No.1 in 25 years and seven months. Samsung had held the top spot continuously since November 2000.
On a total market-cap basis including preferred shares, Samsung remained ahead — a detail Korean media was careful to note at the time.
Why it happened is simple: AI demand tightened memory supply and pushed prices up, and the company with the most concentrated memory exposure benefited most.
Why two Korean firms control most of the world's memory
It's a 40-year head start. Korea's semiconductor history dates back to the mid-1960s, and in 1983 South Korea became the third country in the world to develop 64K DRAM, after the US and Japan. Everyone who has tried to catch up since has been chasing four decades of accumulated process knowledge.
Capital intensity is the real moat. A modern memory fab costs tens of billions of dollars and can take the better part of a decade to plan and build. SK hynix is developing a roughly 4.15 million m² cluster in Yongin with four fabs planned over about ten years. Samsung plans six fabs at its Pyeongtaek cluster, several of which are already operating. Between them, the two are reported to be targeting around 7.1 million wafers per month by 2030. You cannot start a memory company in a garage.
It's an ecosystem, not two isolated firms. As of 2022, Korea accounted for an estimated 24.4% of the global semiconductor equipment market and 18.3% of the materials market, with dedicated supplier clusters and nearby investment from ASML in EUV-related facilities.
Where Korea is clearly not No.1
This is the perspective check that makes the whole picture honest. Compare the numbers: roughly 70% of global DRAM versus something on the order of 17% of the global foundry market. Korea also has almost no meaningful presence in leading-edge chip design — there is no Korean Nvidia or Korean Qualcomm operating at global scale.
And Korea has very limited natural resources, meaning heavy reliance on imported raw materials and key equipment to keep the fabs running. That's a genuine strategic vulnerability, not a footnote.
What this means for you as a reader: if you're tracking the AI hardware story, don't treat "Korean chips" as a proxy for the whole semiconductor industry. Korea is a supply-side bottleneck in one critical component. When memory prices move, Samsung and SK hynix move — and so does the cost of building AI data centers.
FAQ
Is SK hynix owned by Samsung?
No. They're rivals from entirely separate conglomerates. SK hynix belongs to the SK Group, with SK Square — spun off from SK Telecom — as its largest shareholder at about 20%. Samsung Electronics is part of the Samsung Group.
Who's bigger, Samsung or TSMC?
They're not really competing in the same category. Samsung is far more diversified (phones, TVs, appliances, plus three chip divisions), while TSMC is a pure contract manufacturer and the clear global foundry leader. Samsung's foundry arm trails TSMC significantly — that's precisely the gap Samsung's internal reviews have been targeting.
Are there other Korean chip companies besides these two?
Yes — Korea has a real supplier ecosystem in semiconductor equipment and materials, where it held an estimated 24% and 18% of global market share respectively as of 2022. But in terms of globally recognized chipmakers, Samsung and SK hynix are the two that matter.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be taken as financial or investment advice. See our Disclaimer for more.
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