The memory market felt the full effects of the economic crisis in 2009. Long lasting over supply was spurred on by a massive imbalance between supply and demand. From 2005 to 2007, the capital expenditures on DRAM fabs was over $50 billion as top producers frantically built facilities in order to meet growing demand. However, poor consumer sales, brought on by a weak global economy, caused demand for to plummet in 2008 and 2009, causing memory prices to fall and left a massive overstock of inventory. Vendors were forced to sell product below cost just to continue to recoup the fab investment made a couple of years earlier. Some vendors slashed output, while others sold off equipment and facilities in order to attempt to realign current demand with supply. While the market leaders Samsung and Intel managed to maintain profitability, especially in the second half of 2009, some manufacturers, such as Qimonda and Spansion, couldn’t overcome these demand issues and filed for insolvency in the early part of 2009.

Although the market has remained challenging, 2010 looks to be considerably brighter as the end of the recession has spurred consumer demand, while memory prices have stabilized and are increasing again thanks to a reduction inventory in the channel and restocking activity has progressed. Databeans predicts that global memory revenue will reach $57 billion in 2010 and account for 22 percent of the total $258.7 billion semiconductor market. This is an industry best 28 percent improvement from 2009 sales. Going into the future, total memory revenue will grow an average 12 percent annually until it reaches $99 billion in 2015.

Databeans separates the memory market according to type, including DRAM, Flash, SRAM, and other miscellaneous forms of memory which include PROMS and ROM. DRAM and Flash account for the vast majority of the market however, with 95 percent of all revenue combined.