Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) grew faster than the market itself -- and faster than both companies ahead of it. The memory maker's DRAM rose about 66% quarter over quarter to $36 billion, lifting its share of the market to 23.3%.
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That leaves Micron just 1.6 percentage points behind SK Hynix (NASDAQ:SKHY), which held a 24.9% share on about $38.6 billion of DRAM revenue. Samsung Electronics (OTC:SSNLF) led at 39.4%. One quarter earlier, Micron's deficit to SK Hynix was 6.4 points.
A fast-closing gap
Rewind to the third quarter of 2025, and this race looked settled. SK Hynix led the entire DRAM market then with a 33.2% share, while Micron sat third at 25.7%, by TrendForce's count.The gap between the two was 7.5 percentage points. It narrowed to 6.4 points by the first quarter of 2026, and it sits at 1.6 today. In short, the closing is accelerating.
SK Hynix isn't struggling, either. Its DRAM revenue grew about 38% sequentially in the latest quarter and has nearly tripled since the third quarter of 2025. It's simply being outgrown -- Micron expanded about 66%, and even first-place Samsung, at about 63%, grew faster.
After all, the market underneath them has exploded. Total DRAM revenue has more than tripled in three quarters, from $41.4 billion, as data centers absorb memory faster than the industry can supply it.
TrendForce isn't the only firm showing a tight race, either. Counterpoint Research pegs the gap even tighter, and it said in August it expects Micron to surpass SK Hynix soon.
Micron's gain is coming from conventional memory
Micron's rise, notably, isn't being driven by high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked chips that feed graphics processing units (GPUs) and other AI processors. Counterpoint estimates Micron's share of the HBM market actually fell during the second quarter, to 18% from 21%.SK Hynix kept its HBM lead with about half of that market (down from 64% a year earlier), and Samsung climbed to 33%.
The share Micron won came from the conventional side. TrendForce attributes the quarter's revenue surge to sharply higher conventional DRAM contract prices, not volume. Bit shipments grew only modestly and suppliers' inventories sit at historic lows. Ordinary memory (the kind in servers, phones, and PCs) has turned scarce.
