While Samsung maintained the top shipment spot with a 25% market share, the Chinese manufacturer YMTC reached the global top three for the first time, surpassing Kioxia in shipment volume.
This shift is largely fueled by the transition of AI workloads from training models to inference, which is the process of a live AI system providing answers or generating content.
According to the report, these tasks require storage that can handle large datasets with high speed and low power consumption.
This intense demand for server-grade hardware has created a supply shortage for consumer products, pushing prices for home and office electronics to record highs as manufacturers prioritize the more profitable enterprise market.
The market landscape is now defined by how companies balance production between different memory types.
Samsung saw its shipment share dip as it focused on high-margin DRAM, a type of volatile memory often used for short-term data processing, while SK hynix grew its presence through its subsidiary Solidigm.
Although YMTC has climbed the shipment rankings with its advanced 3D NAND technology, it currently ranks fifth in revenue because its sales are still concentrated in lower-priced consumer components.
The company plans to shift its focus toward data-center storage through the end of the year to improve its financial standing.