2010 worldwide module house revenue ranking

TAIWAN: According to DRAMeXchange, a research department of Trendforce, the 2010 module revenue ranking is conducted only on the revenue derived from DRAM business given the diversified business for module houses.

As for DRAM industry, DRAM price rebounded from 2H09 after the financial crisis in 2008. The recovering momentum and PC replacement helped to fuel up the upward DRAM trend. DDR3 1Gb eTT reached $3.09 in the end of March, 2010 while DDR2 1Gb eTT also climbed to $3.15. Both DRAM vendors and module houses indicated the strong revenue growth at that time. With the reversing market in 2H10, DRAM prices began to decline. However, 2010 is still a good year for module houses.

2010 worldwide module house revenue is up 54 percent to $9.3 billion from $6.3 billion in 2009, a satisfactory performance from strong demands and climbing DRAM price. Revenue from top-5 module houses accounts for 78 percent and 91 percent for top-10 module houses. Kingston has the spectacular performance with over 100 percent revenue growth and strengthened the leadership status. Kingston’s market share is up to 51 percent from 39 percent in 2010.

Followed by Kingston, A-DATA and Ramaxel tapped No.2 and No.3 with limited market share gap. DRAM revenue from top-10 module houses increased 55 percent YoY. Under the global competition, regional and small module houses are getting eliminated by large module houses and only big players can survive in the industry.

Kingston sustained its leadership among DRAM module houses in 2010, while module houses are seeking new territories for new business in 2011

Kingston can be considered as unchallenged among module houses in 2010. Its revenue not only increased 95 percent YoY but also reached a level where its revenue is higher than the summed revenue of other market participants ranked from second to twentieth. Besides the precise market view on DRAM price, Kingston enhanced its revenue generator by penetrating into PC-OEM DRAM supply chain where the negotiation power for DRAM price as first-tier PC-OEM helps Kingston to gain more market share. A-DATA remained 2nd place in the ranking in 2010 with 39 percent YoY revenue growth. A-DATA followed the same strategy as Kingston on PC -OEM supply chain penetration besides original retail sales.

Looking forward in 2011, due to continuously declining DRAM spot price, spot price market remained inactive. In addition, the use of 4GB specification as mainstream application in PC market has made it difficult for module house to generate revenue from upgrade demand.

Luckily, first-tier modules already penetrated into the supply chain in PC-OEMs to secure the sales and exerted effort on industrial market, server-basis memory, over-clocking memory and even military market. As for NAND Flash business, SSD and even MCP are turning to the spotlight for module houses besides memory card and UFD. Business diversification helps those module houses adjust the strategy flexibly to gain more profit in volatile market.Source: DRAMeXchange, Taiwan.