South Korea’s SK Hynix Co. has been elbowed out by Intel in NAND flash memory shipments in the third quarter as the U.S. CPU giant makes eager push into the memory sector dominated by Asian names.

According to semiconductor industry tracker DRAMeXchange on Tuesday, SK Hynix secured a 10.3 percent of the global NAND flash memory market in the July-September period this year, slipping from long-held No. 5 rank to the sixth. Its place was replaced by its previous follower Intel that claimed 10.9 percent share this year.

Samsung Electronics Co., another Korean memory chip giant maintained its lead with a 33.5 percent share. Kioxia, formerly Toshiba Memory, stuck to No. 2 position with 18.7 percent share, followed by Western Digital with 13.7 percent and Micron with 12.9 percent.

Intel has been moving aggressively to expand its presence in the global memory chip market, which currently is led by Korean makers Samsung and SK Hynix. It startled its competitors by recording a 37.2 percent on-year jump in NAND flash memory sales in the third quarter. Its solid-state drive sales were especially strong in the third quarter.

The CPU giant recently has unveiled Optane technology that combines the strengths of DRAM and NAND flash memory chips. It also plans to release 144-layer QLC NAND for solid-state drives, upgraded from current 96-layer. An industry expert projected Intel to even introduce a product that combines CPU and memory chip, which would be a great threat to Korean memory chip makers.

Some experts, however, see Intel’s recent win over SK Hynix may not last as the Korean chipmaker’s output was cut down in the third quarter due to its shift towards next-gen products. SK Hynix’s current mainstay product is 72-layer NAND flash memory but it already has finished developing 96-layear and 128-layer chips.

By Chun Gyung-woon and Cho Jeehyun

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