Kingston is king of the DRAM DIMMs

MARKET RESEARCH firm iSuppli said that Kingston Technology kept its pole position as the worldwide vendor of third party DRAM.

According to figures it gathered, Kingston sold $1.5 billion worth of branded DRAM modules - a 16.7 per cent share of the Dramurai pie.

Other familiar names were well down the pecking order, as this chart - based on iSuppli data - illustrates. The figures represent revs in millions of dollar US.

Rank	Firm	Revs	Share
1	Kingston	$1,475	16.7%
2	SMART	$483	5.5%
3	A-Data	$453	5.1%
4	Crucial	$418	4.7%
5	Apacer	$355	4%
6	MA Labs	$345	3.9%
7	Ramaxel	$325	3.7%
8	Corsair	$317	3.6%
9	Wintec	$250	2.8%
10	PNY	$245	2.8%
11	Kingmax	$230	2.6%
12	Transcend	$229	2.6%

Senior memory analyst Nam Hyung Kim said that Kingston probably accounted for $2 billion, but it also sells memory under other brand names, through resellers and distributors, and to original equipment manufacturers.

Kingston is held privately, accounting for the vagueness - but it also diversified its business last year - with DRAM accounting for 70 per cent in 2005 compared to 85 per cent the year before.

Corsair and Wintec moved into the top 10 because of whitebox and retail sales. Overall sales of DRAM fell by eight per cent in 2005. µ

L'INQ
iSuppli