China’s YMTC just passed Micron and Kioxia in NAND shipments: here's why it matters

China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies has broken into the global top three for NAND shipments, overtaking Kioxia and finishing ahead of Micron, showing how quickly China’s memory industry is advancing.

YMTC captured 14% of global NAND shipments in the second quarter, behind Samsung’s 25% and SK Hynix’s 22%, according to Counterpoint Research.

But the ranking comes with a caveat: YMTC remained fifth by NAND revenue, behind both Kioxia and Micron. That gap between volume and value is what matters next.

YMTC has won the volume race, but not the money race

YMTC’s NAND shipments rose 22% from a year earlier and 5% from the previous quarter as shortages helped it expand supply to Chinese device makers.

Counterpoint said the company is mass-producing 267-layer 3D NAND and developing technology beyond 300 layers using its Xtacking architecture.

MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint, told Barron’s in June that additional capital from a potential IPO could equip YMTC to “surpass both Kioxia and Micron” and become the world’s third-largest NAND producer.

By shipment volume, that prediction has effectively arrived.

But shipping more bits does not automatically mean earning more money. Counterpoint said YMTC’s product mix remains concentrated in consumer applications, with limited exposure to the expensive enterprise SSDs used in data centres.

Micron and Kioxia therefore continue to generate more NAND revenue despite shipping fewer bits.

AI is moving NAND’s profit pool toward enterprise storage

That distinction is becoming more important because artificial intelligence is changing where NAND demand comes from.

Enterprise SSDs accounted for 48% of global NAND bits shipped in Q2, almost double their 26% share a year earlier, Counterpoint said.

Servers are expected to consume more than half of all NAND bits by the end of 2026 as AI workloads shift from training towards inference.

Inference requires fast access to large datasets and KV caches, making high-capacity enterprise storage increasingly valuable.

Counterpoint said profitability through 2027 will therefore depend less on total shipment volume and more on product mix.

YMTC is targeting that opportunity. The researcher said the company plans to increase the proportion of enterprise SSDs in its mix during the second half of 2026.

Micron is insulated for now, but China changes the equation

Nearly 80% of Micron’s revenue comes from DRAM, including high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators. NAND is therefore only part of its business.

The memory market also remains unusually tight. Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh reiterated an Outperform rating and $1,375 target on Micron this week, arguing that DRAM and NAND supply constraints could persist through 2027.

That makes an immediate price war less likely, but longer-term risk is different for Micron and Kioxia.

BNP Paribas analyst Karl Ackerman has warned that Chinese memory companies including YMTC are “aggressively ramping capacity”, potentially pushing parts of the consumer-memory market towards oversupply. He nevertheless maintained an Outperform rating on Micron.