In terms of the global NAND market share, Samsung accounts for 26.8%, KIOXIA for 18.1%, and YMTC for 12.7%. The combined market share of the top seven manufacturers reaches approximately 99.8%, indicating that the market has stepped into an oligopolistic structure.

The storage industry is emerging from the bottom of the traditional cycle, but the real change is not a "comprehensive recovery". Instead, it is a structural recovery divided into different technical levels and rhythms driven explicitly by AI. The storage industry is shifting from being "price and cycle-driven" to "application structure and system demand-driven".

After a long period of inventory correction and price decline, the storage industry has entered a phase where destocking is completed, supply is contracting, and growth is restarting. AI is becoming the core variable determining the structure of storage demand.

1. AI is directly driving storage demand toward enterprise-grade SSDs, HBM, PCIe Gen5/NVMe, and system-level storage. The expansion of AI does not simply increase "the amount of storage used", but completely changes "the type of storage used". Storage capacity continues to expand, the demand for bandwidth and concurrent access surges, and data reliability and long-term operational stability have become essential infrastructure requirements.

2. HBM is not a simple replacement for DDR; instead, it is reshaping the entire storage manufacturing rhythm. HBM features larger single-die sizes, more advanced process requirements, higher yield and packaging difficulties, and significantly longer manufacturing cycles. When production capacity is occupied by HBM, the supply of traditional DDR will naturally tighten, and older processes will be gradually phased out.

3. The demand for traditional DRAM (such as DDR4) has not disappeared, but its supply is being actively withdrawn. This is because older processes occupy production capacity while offering limited gross margins and system value, which cannot support the system requirements of the AI era. As manufacturers concentrate resources on DDR5 and HBM, older-generation DRAM is gradually entering the EOL (End of Life) stage.

4. Compared with DRAM, the pace of change in NAND is significantly slower, but its structure is also evolving. NAND is not experiencing a "sudden demand explosion"; instead, its demand is shifting from consumer-dominated to system and data center-dominated.

5. Automotive storage does not pursue the most advanced technology but the most certain and stable demand. With the increasing electrification, motorization, and intelligence of automobiles, the number of storage chips per vehicle is rising, and the storage capacity per vehicle is increasing, with extremely high requirements for reliability, temperature range, and startup stability. Therefore, NOR Flash will remain irreplaceable in automotive scenarios for a long time, and NAND and NOR are forming a "hybrid architecture".

In conclusion, AI, data centers, and automotive electronics have not simplified storage; instead, they are pushing storage toward a more systematic, more engineering-oriented, and more long-term operation-focused role.

IDC：Global Enterprise Storage Systems Q3 2025 Tracker 

Gartner：2025 Strategic Roadmap for Storage Technology

Omdia：NAND Flash Market Share & Supply-Demand Analysis 2025 Q4

Automotive Engineering：NOR Flash & NAND Hybrid Architectures for Next-Gen Cars