Chinese NAND maker YMTC has risen to third place globally in bit shipments. According to Counterpoint Research's Q2 2026 tally published on August 12, YMTC holds a 14% share, trailing Samsung and the SK hynix group. However, in revenue terms YMTC ranks fifth, meaning the rise in shipment ranking does not necessarily indicate it has caught up in high-priced datacenter products.
Meanwhile, the fab expansion plan is not the existing capacity underpinning the current shipment ranking. The plan reported by Reuters mixes operational fabs, fabs being ramped up, two fabs with undetermined timelines, and design values at full capacity. Monthly wafer counts are also not the same as NAND bit output or the number of finished SSD units.
Rounded to 14% for 3rd Place—the Gap with Kioxia Cannot Be Determined from Published Figures
According to Counterpoint's published chart, NAND bit shipment shares for Q2 2026 were: Samsung 25%, SK hynix 13%, and Solidigm 9%. Combined, the SK hynix group reaches 22%. Both YMTC and Kioxia are shown at 14%, followed by Micron at 13% and SanDisk at 11%.
| Company/Group | Bit Shipment Share | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung | 25% | 1st place |
| SK hynix group | 22% | Combined SK hynix 13% and Solidigm 9% |
| YMTC | 14% | Ranked 3rd by Counterpoint |
| Kioxia | 14% | Rounded figure in published chart |
| Micron | 13% | Follows the two companies in the chart |
| SanDisk | 11% | Lowest in the chart |
Even though the displayed values are identical, Counterpoint does not treat the two companies as tied. While it places YMTC in third by a narrow margin over Kioxia, the chart's figures are rounded. Therefore, the exact gap between the two companies below the decimal point cannot be calculated from the published values, nor can sub-percentage-point specifics be estimated.
Samsung's shipment share, which leads the market, fell from 32% in Q2 2024 to 25%, partly because the company prioritized high-margin DRAM output over NAND. Solidigm's bit shipments grew 40% quarter-over-quarter, boosting the SK hynix group's combined share to 22%. YMTC's bit shipments also grew 22% year-over-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter, a pace that pushed up its ranking.
Counterpoint notes that YMTC has been expanding supply to domestic Chinese OEMs and is mass-producing 267-layer 3D NAND. It also states that the company is developing technology exceeding 300 layers based on Xtacking. This description of manufacturing and development is based on Counterpoint's research, and the layer count or mass-production scale cannot be confirmed from official product pages.
Why Is Revenue Ranked 5th Despite 3rd Place in Shipments?
This third-place ranking pertains specifically to NAND "bit shipment" volume—not to revenue or profit rankings, and it is a separate metric from wafer input capacity or finished SSD unit counts. According to Counterpoint, enterprise SSDs (eSSDs) for servers accounted for 48% of NAND bit shipments in Q2, a sharp increase from 26% in the same period last year. The firm also projects this could exceed 50% by year-end.
In AI inference workloads, there is demand to hold KV caches and datasets in fast, high-capacity storage, drawing eSSDs closer to the center of NAND demand. The 48% figure cited by Counterpoint refers to the share of shipped bits, not revenue. While the firm also states that overall NAND market revenue grew fivefold year-over-year, this does not represent YMTC's own Q2 revenue growth rate.
YMTC's product mix centers on relatively low-priced consumer products, with a low proportion of high-priced datacenter eSSDs. As a result, it ranks fifth in revenue, behind Micron and Kioxia. Counterpoint observes that supply tightness has pushed average selling prices for consumer products to record highs, but price increases alone cannot offset differences in product mix. In the Q1 2026 revenue share figures Counterpoint presented, YMTC held 13%—but this cannot be directly compared with the 14% bit-shipment share for Q2, since the denominators and metrics being measured differ.
Kioxia allocates more than 30% of its shipments to servers, but Counterpoint explains that rising server-grade prices have dampened customer purchasing, causing its shipment growth to lag behind YMTC's. The reason Kioxia and YMTC appear tied at 14% in the published chart stems not only from their converging shares but also from differences in their customer base and product mix. This is precisely why the rounded share figures alone cannot be equated with revenue standing or presence in the datacenter market.
eSSD Products Exist, but Shipment Mix and Customer Qualification Remain Unclear
YMTC is not without eSSD offerings. Its official website lists the PE501 as the company's first ultra-high-capacity PCIe 5.0 QLC enterprise SSD. Built using the X4-6080 based on Xtacking 4.0, it offers capacities of 15.36TB, 30.72TB, 61.44TB, and 122.88TB.
The PE522 is another offering—a PCIe 5.0 TLC enterprise SSD using 3D NAND built on Xtacking 4.0. It comes in capacities ranging from 3.84TB to 30.72TB, with another configuration spanning 3.2TB to 25.6TB. These product pages serve as evidence that YMTC has prepared a datacenter-oriented lineup.
However, the product pages contain no customer names, shipment volumes, or numbers of qualified customers. The maximum capacity of 122.88TB alone tells us nothing about mass-production scale or adoption volume. Counterpoint states that YMTC plans to raise its eSSD ratio in the second half of 2026 to solidify its third-place shipment ranking, but a plan is not the same as an achieved result.
TrendForce has also reported that QLC eSSD demand is growing amid structural shortages in AI servers and HDDs, with combined revenue for the top five brands in Q1 2026 surging 83.7% quarter-over-quarter to exceed $38.9 billion. The firm forecasts continued supply shortages throughout 2026, citing an almost complete absence of new capacity additions among major NAND makers. However, since TrendForce and Counterpoint differ in the companies covered and their aggregation methods, this market size figure cannot be directly compared with or mixed into Counterpoint's share data.
500,000 Wafers/Month: A Full-Capacity Design Ceiling Versus Current NAND Output
Reuters reported in April that YMTC's two existing fabs have a combined capacity of 200,000 wafers per month. The company is also building one additional fab and planning two more, with three sources explaining that each of the three new fabs would have a design capacity of 100,000 wafers per month at full operation. Adding this to existing capacity brings the overall design ceiling to 500,000 wafers per month.
However, this 500,000-wafer figure includes equipment that is not yet operational. According to Reuters, the third fab in Wuhan has completed construction and is installing equipment, with operations expected to begin by the end of 2026 and reach 50,000 wafers per month by 2027. Sources also said that more than 50% of the equipment was procured from Chinese companies.
The locations and start timelines for the remaining two fabs have not been confirmed. All three new fabs may allocate a portion of their capacity to DRAM, with the exact ratio depending on the progress of DRAM development. Since layer count, bits per cell, die size, and yield all affect actual NAND bit output, the 500,000-wafer figure cannot be described as current NAND capacity or as output on par with Samsung.
This expansion plan was not announced by YMTC itself. It comes from information Reuters obtained from sources, and the launch timeline for the third fab cannot be treated as equivalent progress to the two fabs whose timing remains unconfirmed. While design capacity offers a clue for estimating investment scale, it is not a figure that substantiates shipment share or guarantees future NAND production volume.
Equipment procurement is also subject to US export controls. In October 2022, the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) imposed licensing requirements on items destined for use in developing or producing NAND with 128 layers or more at Chinese-owned fabs in China, with a presumption of denial for such applications. In December of the same year, BIS added YMTC to the Entity List, severely restricting its access to items, software, and technology subject to the EAR.
YMTC's third-place ranking is, first and foremost, a milestone limited to bit shipments. For this to translate into a shift in revenue ranking, the planned increase in eSSD ratio for the second half of 2026 must materialize into actual results reflected in customer qualifications and shipment mix. Whether the third fab ramps up to 50,000 wafers per month by 2027, how much of that capacity is allocated to NAND, and whether mass production can be stabilized—these factors will determine the next set of figures.