YMTC NAND Shipments Jump to Third Globally, Surpassing Micron and Kioxia as Micron's eSSD Pricing Power Faces Pressure

TradingKey - On August 12, Eastern Time, Counterpoint Research released its Q2 2026 memory market report. YMTC surged to third place globally for the first time with a 14% NAND shipment market share, trailing only Samsung (25%) and SK Hynix (SKHY) (22%), slightly surpassing Kioxia; Micron (MU) ranked fifth with 13%.

[Source: Counterpoint Research]

The jump in shipment volume does not fully align with revenue rankings. Counterpoint data shows that YMTC's Q2 revenue still ranked fifth, behind Micron and Kioxia. The main reason is that YMTC remains focused on consumer applications, with a relatively low proportion of high-unit-price enterprise SSDs for data centers. Although Micron ranked only fifth in shipments, its higher proportion of enterprise SSDs supported its higher revenue ranking.

Meanwhile, the market landscape is changing, with the market focus shifting rapidly from consumer to enterprise applications and AI workloads migrating from training to inference. This has pushed enterprise SSDs' share of total NAND shipment capacity up from 26% in the same period last year to 48%, with Counterpoint expecting it to exceed 50% by the end of the year.

Under this trend, YMTC is also accelerating efforts to address its shortcomings. On the technical front, the company's currently mass-produced 267-layer 3D NAND is based on the Xtacking 4.0 architecture, while research and development on 300+ layer technology is progressing.

In terms of products, YMTC showcased three new PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSD products at CFMS 2026, model numbers PE501, PE511, and PE522. Among them, the PE501 QLC SSD reaches a maximum capacity of 122.88TB with a sequential read speed of up to 14.2 GB/s, targeting AI server scenarios.

Regarding production capacity, YMTC's two fabs currently operating in Wuhan have a combined monthly capacity of about 200,000 wafers, with the Phase 3 factory expected to go into production by the end of 2026.

Counterpoint Research Director MS Hwang expects YMTC's revenue share to surpass Micron in 2027; if mass production of its 400-layer 3D NAND goes smoothly, it could surpass Kioxia in 2028.

For Micron, the short-term impact of YMTC catching up on its NAND business remains limited, as its HBM and advanced DRAM businesses continue to provide stable profit support.

However, medium-term pressure is building up. When a competitor possesses both rapid technical iteration speed and a clear strategic direction, Micron's pricing power in the enterprise SSD market will face continuous narrowing pressure.