Micron, the fifth largest manufacturer of NAND flash memory, first began shipping 176-layer NAND flash memory chips to customers in November 2020. Meanwhile, the industry leaders, Samsung Electronics and SK, have not yet mastered the serial production of such products. In addition, in January, Micron was the first to announce the production of 4th generation 10nm DRAM.

Despite the fact that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix jointly accounted for 71% of the DRAM market and 45% of the NAND flash memory market in the fourth quarter of 2020, the fact that they lost the lead to Micron twice in a row testifies to the source, that their technological leadership is in jeopardy. Meanwhile, a year or two ago, it was thought that competitors were technologically ahead of Micron by about two years.
Thus, Samsung Electronics was the first company in the world to master the mass production of 96-layer V-NAND flash memory in July 2018, and SK Hynix – 128-layer 4D-NAND memory in June 2019. Micron began shipping 128-layer NAND flash in the second quarter of 2020. Now, many experts are not convinced that the Korean semiconductor industry will maintain its leading position for long.
The source explains this by the fact that it is much more difficult for a leader to take each next step forward than his followers, since the development of technological processes has come to the limit. Samsung Electronics companies spend huge amounts of money and a lot of time, and those catching up overtook it at a much lower cost, since they could take into account Samsung’s experience and schedule.
Experts predict a weakening of differentiation between manufacturers in terms of investment in facilities. This is facilitated by payments from the US and EU governments to allocate colossal funds for the development of the semiconductor industry. In addition, some analysts expect Micron to receive full support from the US government in line with the government’s commitment to supply independence in strategic product categories.
The source resembles data from a report from the Korea Industry Federation. It said that the Chinese company SMIC received government support in the amount of 6.6% of its total sales between 2014 and 2018. Government support for Micron accounted for 3.3% of total sales. For comparison: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix gained 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively.
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