South Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. saw its market share in the global mobile memory industry exceed 57 percent during the third quarter thanks to growing demand for mobile devices, a market researcher said Sunday.

Samsung Electronics sold about 2.1 billion units of mobile dynamic random access memories up until the third quarter of this year, according to a report by market researcher IHS iSuppli. Its global market share stood at 57.05 percent at the end of the third quarter.

The numbers are calculated by converting all mobile DRAMs that the company sold into sales of 1-gigabit memory chips.

Samsung Electronics’ global sales of mobile DRAMs, memory chips used in diverse mobile devices, had already exceeded its annual sales of 1.63 billion units tallied last year. Its market share last year was 50.4 percent.

The increase is attributable to growing demand for mobile devices, in particular smartphones, which usually require high-capacity and high-speed memory chips.

During the first three quarters, about 3.69 billion units of mobile DRAMs were sold, up 13.6 percent from the annual sales tallied throughout last year.

Samsung Electronics sold about 640 million units of mobile DRAMs in the first quarter, 730 million units in the second quarter and 731.5 million units in the third quarter, the report showed.

In the third quarter, Samsung was followed by its Korean rival Hynix Semiconductor Inc., whose global market share was 21.9 percent. Their combined market share rose to 79.2 percent during the period.

Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc. came next with a 16.7 percent share, trailed by U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. with 3.4 percent, according to the report. (Yonhap News)