CXMT has turned down an order from Apple rather than quote below the three established DRAM suppliers, according to the company’s own state news service and semiconductor trade reports.
Suppliers usually swallow deep discounts to lock in a handset giant. Apple is said to have asked for pricing below what Micron, Samsung and SK hynix charge today. CXMT refused. A Taiwanese server maker seeking DDR5 parts was turned away too, with no clear reason given, per the same reporting.
The likelier explanation is arithmetic. CXMT’s monthly wafer output runs around 320,000 and is forecast to approach 420,000 by 2027, and it already supplies Xiaomi, Transsion, Honor, OPPO and vivo. Selling abroad would force rationing at home, which cuts against a national push for memory self-sufficiency.
Its standing is no longer marginal. On revenue the Hefei-based firm held nearly a tenth of the worldwide DRAM market in the second quarter, good for fourth place, where a year earlier it sat at about 4%.
The weakness sits elsewhere. In high-bandwidth memory the gap to the leaders is two generations, lithography tools needed for advanced yields remain out of reach, and its eight-layer stacks have reportedly been yielding roughly a quarter of dies at final test.
One fact worth keeping separate from the rest: TrendForce put its share at 9.5% that quarter, against 7.6% three months earlier.
For buyers, the message is that the cheapest capacity in the market is not automatically available to them.
