South Korea's tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. basked in a record share of the global NAND flash market in the first quarter of the year, data showed Tuesday.

Samsung's share came to 42.6 percent of the global DRAM market in terms of sales during the January-March period, up 0.6 percentage point from the previous quarter, according to the data compiled by industry tracker IHS Inc. The company logged $2.61 billion in global sales, also up 3.1 percent from the same period a year earlier.


NAND flash memory products are widely used in smartphones and laptops. Compared to dynamic random access memory, flash memory can preserve data even when it has no power supply.

Samsung has sit on the throne of the world's NAND flash market for 14 years in a row, since 2002, and is expected to rule the market on the back of the increased use in personal computers.

Samsung's smaller rivals are also expanding their presence in the global NAND flash market, narrowing their gap with the industry leader, the data showed.

Japan-based Toshiba Corp.'s share in the global NAND flash market reached 28 percent in the first quarter, up 4 percentage points from a year earlier, the IHS said.

U.S.-based Micron Technology, Inc. followed with 18.8 percent of the NAND flash market and Samsung's smaller South Korean rival SK hynix Inc. with 10.6 percent, the data showed. (Yonhap)