Server DRAM is estimated to comprise around 37.6% in the DRAM industry’s total bit output

Since it is expected that the growth rate of smartphone shipments and the average installed capacity growth rate in 2023 are not optimistic, starting from 2022, DRAM suppliers transferred the production capacity originally allocated to mobile DRAM to server DRAM with relatively clear demand prospects, in an attempt to alleviate the imbalance between supply and demand of mobile DRAM.

The annual growth rate of the average installed capacity of smartphone operating memory has slowed down significantly since 2022, mainly because smartphone manufacturers had relatively large inventory pressure in 2022, resulting in most new products using existing inventory specifications. As the effect of destocking gradually emerges in 2023, TrendForce expects the average annual growth rate of mobile DRAM capacity to be about 6.7%, which is higher than the growth rate of 3.9% in 2022.

Driven by AI and HPC (high-performance computing), the growth rate of annual shipments and average loading capacity of server DRAM is higher than that of mobile DRAM, and it is expected to be the category with the highest proportion of DRAM output in the next few years. Since DRAM suppliers lowered the price of server DRAM in the third quarter of last year, this is also a favorable condition for the increase in shipments. TrendForce predicts that the average annual growth rate of server DRAM capacity in 2023 will reach 12.1%.

The increase in server DRAM demand is usually accompanied by an increase in enterprise SSD shipments. Similar to server DRAM, the proportion of enterprise-level solid-state drives in NAND flash memory demand is gradually increasing. TrendForce predicts that enterprise-level solid-state drives are expected to become the largest application field of NAND flash memory in 2025.