Micron Is 1.6 Points From Taking the No. 2 Spot in DRAM

Global DRAM revenue reached nearly $155 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up about 60% from the first quarter, according to a report this week from market researcher TrendForce.

Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) grew faster than the market itself -- and faster than both companies ahead of it. The memory maker's DRAM revenue rose about 66% quarter over quarter to $36 billion, lifting its share of the market to 23.3%.

That leaves Micron just 1.6 percentage points behind SK Hynix (NASDAQ:SKHY), which held a 24.9% share on about $38.6 billion of DRAM revenue. Samsung Electronics (OTC:SSNLF) led at 39.4%. One quarter earlier, Micron's deficit to SK Hynix was 6.4 points.

Image source: Micron.

A fast-closing gap

Rewind to the third quarter of 2025, and this race looked settled. SK Hynix led the entire DRAM market then with a 33.2% share, while Micron sat third at 25.7%, by TrendForce's count.

The gap between the two was 7.5 percentage points. It narrowed to 6.4 points by the first quarter of 2026, and it sits at 1.6 today. In short, the closing is accelerating.

SK Hynix isn't struggling, either. Its DRAM revenue grew about 38% sequentially in the latest quarter and has nearly tripled since the third quarter of 2025. It's simply being outgrown -- Micron expanded about 66%, and even first-place Samsung, at about 63%, grew faster.

After all, the market underneath them has exploded. Total DRAM revenue has more than tripled in three quarters, from $41.4 billion, as artificial intelligence (AI) data centers absorb memory faster than the industry can supply it.

TrendForce isn't the only firm showing a tight race, either. Counterpoint Research pegs the gap even tighter, and it said in August it expects Micron to surpass SK Hynix soon.

Micron's gain is coming from conventional memory

Micron's rise, notably, isn't being driven by high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked chips that feed graphics processing units (GPUs) and other AI processors. Counterpoint estimates Micron's share of the HBM market actually fell during the second quarter, to 18% from 21%.

SK Hynix kept its HBM lead with about half of that market (down from 64% a year earlier), and Samsung climbed to 33%.

The share Micron won came from the conventional side. TrendForce attributes the quarter's revenue surge to sharply higher conventional DRAM contract prices, not volume. Bit shipments grew only modestly and suppliers' inventories sit at historic lows. Ordinary memory (the kind in servers, phones, and PCs) has turned scarce.

That mix matters: SK Hynix holds about half of HBM but only about a quarter of the overall DRAM market, so a quarter in which conventional prices surged while HBM prices slipped worked against it. Counterpoint cites HBM3E price declines and HBM4 launch delays.

Micron is hardly absent from the AI side, to be sure. Not only is the tech company's HBM4 product already in high-volume shipments for its lead customer's platform, but its total revenue also more than quadrupled year over year to $41.5 billion in its fiscal third quarter of 2026 (the period ended May 28, 2026).

But the second quarter's share shift happened in conventional memory, and I'd argue that detail matters more than the ranking itself.

What is a share point worth?

The 1.6 points separating Micron from SK Hynix equal about $2.5 billion of revenue per quarter at the market's second-quarter size. And most of that would become profit. Micron's guidance for its just-ended fiscal fourth quarter calls for gross margin near 86% and under $2 billion of quarterly operating expenses. At economics like those, closing the gap could mean about $2 billion of extra operating profit per quarter.

However, the driver behind the gain is cooling. TrendForce still expects conventional DRAM contract prices to climb in the third quarter, just far more slowly, at 13% to 18%. The firm says those same prices jumped about 93% to 98% in the first quarter.

And the next phase belongs to HBM4, where Samsung moved into mass production early and SK Hynix still holds about half of the overall HBM market.

So, will Micron take the No. 2 spot in DRAM? On this trajectory, it could happen as soon as the current quarter.

I'd just keep the milestone in perspective. Micron's stock, around $1,017 as of this writing, costs about 6.5 times its expected earnings for its next fiscal year. Investors, it seems, already treat profits this large as temporary.

Whether that skepticism proves right will likely be settled in HBM, where the AI spending is concentrated -- and there, Micron ranks third and lost ground last quarter. That's the ranking I'd keep an eye on.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.