Global Storage Market Faces Tight Supply-Demand; Multiple Enterprises See Performance Growth and Capacity Expansion
In the third quarter of 2025, the global storage market witnessed a high-growth trend amid supply-demand imbalance. Enterprises such as Samsung Electronics and Longsys delivered outstanding performance, while SK hynix and CXMT accelerated capacity layout. The shortage and price increase of core products like DRAM have become the main theme of the industry.
Samsung Electronics achieved its best-ever quarterly performance. In the third quarter of 2025, its sales reached 86.1 trillion KRW, a year-on-year increase of 8.8%; operating profit stood at 12.2 trillion KRW, up 32.5% year-on-year; and net profit was 12.3 trillion KRW, a year-on-year growth of 21%. Driven by the sales growth of HBM3E and SSD, the chip business unit set a quarterly sales record of 33.1 trillion KRW, with an operating profit of 7 trillion KRW. Benefiting from the strong performance of new foldable phones and flagship models, the device business unit achieved sales of 48.4 trillion KRW and an operating profit of 3.5 trillion KRW. During the same period, Samsung’s total investment reached 26.9 trillion KRW, a new high for the same period in history.
Longsys also performed impressively. In the third quarter, its revenue was 6.54 billion CNY, a year-on-year increase of 54.6%, and its net profit was 700 million CNY, turning losses into profits year-on-year. In the first three quarters, the company’s revenue reached 16.73 billion CNY, up 26% year-on-year, and net profit was 710 million CNY, a year-on-year growth of 28%. The performance growth was attributed to the high growth of enterprise-level storage and overseas business. The cumulative deployment of its self-developed main control chips exceeded 100 million, the first batch of self-developed UFS main control chips successfully taped out, and a strategic cooperation was reached with SanDisk.
The tight supply situation in the market has become prominent. Only 70% of enterprise server DRAM orders can be delivered, and the contract price of RDIMM in the fourth quarter has increased by as much as 50%, far exceeding the buyers’ budget expectation of 30%. Samsung has raised the price of eSSD by 35%, and the spot price of DDR5 16GB has risen from 7-8 USD in September to around 13 USD. Some suppliers even refused to provide quotations for October. The order delivery rate for channel merchants and small OEMs is only 35%-40%, and low-priority customers need to turn to the spot market or wait for the release of production capacity in 2026.
The delivery cycle of key products such as LPDDR5X has been extended to 26-39 weeks, and some orders have been delayed until the middle of 2026. The upward trend of prices is difficult to ease in the short term. This pressure has been transmitted to the upstream. MediaTek may face profit pressure in smartphone chips in the fourth quarter of 2025.
To meet market demand, leading enterprises are accelerating capacity expansion. SK hynix has launched the mass production of 10nm-class 6th-generation DRAM, and plans to increase its production proportion to over 50% in 2026, with new capacity mainly invested in the HBM field. CXMT has realized the mass production of LPDDR5X products, covering multiple forms including particles, chips and modules, with speeds ranging from 8533Mbps to 10677Mbps. Among them, the product with the highest speed has started sample delivery to customers. SK hynix predicts that in 2026, the demand for DRAM will grow by more than 20%, and the demand for NAND will increase by more than 10%. The capacity of HBM and storage will remain tight.
Would you like me to supplement the Market Competition Pattern Comparison Table to clearly present the core advantages and layout focuses of each enterprise?