PCs are still the main destination for all DRAM manufactured today, but the PC's share is declining and, for the first time in a generation, PCs have not captured the majority of the DRAM market, market research firm IHS said.
The popularity of tablets and smartphones is to blame for this trend, as PCs accounted for only 49.0 percent of DRAM capacity shipped in the second quarter of this year, down from 50.2 percent in the first quarter. IHS believes that the share will continue to decline and drop to just 42.8 percent by the fourth quarter in 2013. DRAM held a market share of more than 50 percent since the 1980s.
Tablets currently account for 2.7 percent and phones for 12.5 percent. By the end of 2013, IHS expects tablets to be at 6.9 percent and phones at 19.8 percent.
“The arrival of the post-PC era doesn’t mean that people will stop using personal computers, or even necessarily that the PC market will stop expanding,” said Clifford Leimbach, memory analyst at IHS. “What the post-PC era does mean is that personal computers are not at the center of the technology universe anymore - and are seeing their hegemony over the electronics supply chain erode. PCs are no longer generating the kind of growth and overwhelming market size that can single-handedly drive demand, pricing and technology trends in some of the major technology businesses.”
the majority of tablets today use just 512 MB or 1 GB of DRAM, but IHS believes that this amount will grow. By 2015, the common tablet will integrate 2 GB and grow by 30 to 40 percent annually after that.
