Continuing to focus on HBM, Samsung is working hard to catch up with Hynix.

According to media reports, on Tuesday local time, Samsung stated at Memcon 2024, a global gathering of chip manufacturers, that it expects HBM production capacity to increase to 2.9 times last year in 2024. Hwang Sang-joong, executive vice president and head of DRAM products and technology at Samsung, also said:

"Following the already mass-produced third-generation HBM2E and fourth-generation HBM3, we plan to mass-produce the 12-layer fifth-generation HBM3e and 32-gigabit-based 128 GB DDR5 (DRAM solution) in the first half of this year."

“With these products, we are expected to increase our presence in high-performance, large-capacity memory in the era of artificial intelligence.”

At the beginning of this year, Samsung stated at CES 2024 that it expected HBM production capacity in 2024 to be 2.5 times the original.

In addition, Samsung also announced the HBM roadmap at this conference. It is expected that HBM shipments in 2026 will be 13.8 times that of 2023; by 2028, HBM's annual production will further increase to 23.1 times that of 2023.

Can this production increase help Samsung strive for the top in the increasingly fierce HBM competition? What is known so far is that Samsung’s situation does not seem optimistic.

At present, the HBM market presents a "three-legged" pattern: SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron are the only three HBM suppliers in the world. Industry data shows that in the HBM market in 2022, SK Hynix will account for 50% of the market share, Samsung will account for 40%, and Micron will account for 10%.

According to media reports, foreign investors are buying Hynix shares while simultaneously selling Samsung Electronics shares, making Samsung one of the stocks that have been sold the most by foreign investors this month. Coupled with previous news that Hynix plans to establish an AI chip alliance with TSMC, the HBM market seems to be moving from a "three pillars" to a "one dominant player".

As the “new favorite” in the AI era, HBM is expected to continue to be in short supply. Goldman Sachs recently released a research report stating that the market size is expected to increase 10 times from 2022 to 2026 (a four-year compound annual growth rate of 77%), from US$2.3 billion in 2022 to US$23 billion in 2026.