SK Hynix plans to shift additional new capacity toward DDR5 and LPDDR5 while maintaining HBM output, aiming to capitalise on surging prices driven by supply shortages. The company’s theoretical gross margin for DDR5 is estimated to exceed 90%.
Currently, HBM accounts for over 40% of SK Hynix’s revenue — a share far higher than that of Samsung Electronics. Leveraging its first‑mover advantage in AI‑oriented premium memory, SK Hynix is solidifying its HBM market position while aggressively pursuing ultra‑high margins in the conventional DRAM segment.
📈 Extreme pricing window
The DRAM market remains in persistent supply tightness, with DDR5 and LPDDR5 prices soaring — creating what the industry calls an “extreme pricing window”. More critically, production lines for DDR5/LPDDR5 are highly flexible and can be rapidly converted to NAND flash production if market conditions shift — a flexibility that dedicated HBM lines lack.
This allows SK Hynix to diversify across HBM, DDR5, LPDDR5, and NAND, providing a natural hedge against semiconductor cycle volatility.
Capacity roadmap · 3x expansion in 8 years
To underpin the DDR5/LPDDR5 push, SK Hynix has laid out an ambitious production roadmap. The company currently operates a DRAM monthly wafer capacity of roughly 600,000 and has announced a plan to triple its memory production capacity over the next eight years. The new semiconductor cluster in Yongin, South Korea, will serve as the cornerstone of this expansion.
🆚 Samsung Electronics – more conservative, for now
Samsung is accelerating expansion in Pyeongtaek, but its overall capacity plans are not as aggressive as SK Hynix’s. Samsung had originally planned to build within the same Yongin cluster, but that project remains in the planning stage. Nevertheless, industry watchers widely expect Samsung to unveil further capacity expansion plans this year to counter market shifts and competitive pressure.