The global NAND market landscape is entering a new phase of technological competition. Japan's Kioxia is aggressively pushing forward with the mass production of PCIe 6.0 enterprise solid-state drives and UFS 5.0 mobile storage solutions this year, directly challenging Samsung Electronics' leading position in the AI storage sector. The next-generation product battle between the two memory giants from South Korea and Japan is heating up significantly.
According to reports from South Korean tech media, Kioxia began mass production of its tenth-generation (BiCS 10) 3D NAND at its K2 factory in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, in early July this year. Building on this, the company has commercialized its PCIe 6.0 enterprise SSD, the CM10. Simultaneously, Samsung Electronics has announced the mass production of its own PCIe 6.0 eSSD product, the PM1763, and disclosed that its tenth-generation V-NAND (V10) will begin mass production this month, creating a direct competitive clash with Kioxia at a critical juncture. This concurrent commercialization of the latest specification products by both manufacturers will accelerate the performance upgrade cycle for AI data centers and on-device AI markets, significantly impacting the current supply landscape.
In terms of market share, data from market research firm TrendForce indicates that in the first quarter of 2026, Samsung Electronics held the top spot in the global NAND market with 31.6%, followed by SK Hynix at 17.6%, and Kioxia in third place with 13.9%. Although Kioxia's scale is smaller than its South Korean competitors, its pace of technological advancement in the high-performance AI storage segment is accelerating, creating a competitive pressure that cannot be ignored.
Kioxia: BiCS 10 as a Foundation, Dual Track with PCIe 6.0 and UFS 5.0
Kioxia's current technological offensive is centered on its tenth-generation NAND. The BiCS 10 utilizes a 332-layer stacking process and began mass production at the K2 factory in Kitakami in early July. While Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have both completed mass production of their ninth-generation NAND, direct comparisons of stacking layers across different generations are difficult due to varying definitions. However, Kioxia's achievement of being the first to mass-produce NAND with over 300 layers is a significant technological milestone.
Building on this, Kioxia has launched the PCIe 6.0 eSSD CM10 for the data center market. PCIe 6.0, the latest interface standard beginning commercialization this year, delivers substantial performance gains. According to Kioxia's official data, the CM10 offers up to a 92% improvement in sequential read performance and an approximately 85% improvement in random read performance compared to its predecessor.
In the direction of on-device AI, Kioxia plans to start mass production of its UFS 5.0 storage solution by the end of this year. UFS 5.0, the latest embedded storage specification beginning commercialization this year, is primarily used for mobile NAND applications. It offers approximately double the data processing speed of the previous UFS 4.1 generation. Kioxia's UFS 5.0 solution incorporates its own controller and eighth-generation NAND.
Samsung: Multiple Product Lines in Parallel, V10 Ushers in a New Generation of Process Technology
Samsung Electronics has also been highly active in the NAND space this year. The PM1763, which entered mass production in early July, utilizes ninth-generation V-NAND and a new 4nm process controller, becoming Samsung's first commercial product in the PCIe 6.0 arena.
In the field of mobile storage, Samsung completed the development of its UFS 5.0 product in June of this year and plans to initiate mass production in the fourth quarter. Based on ninth-generation NAND, the product achieves a data transfer bandwidth of 10.8GB/s. Samsung positions this as the industry's highest standard, while also focusing on power efficiency.
Of greater interest to the market is the start of mass production for Samsung's V10 NAND. The V10 is estimated to feature over 430 layers and will be the first to introduce hybrid bonding technology and a three-stack architecture, marking a new phase in Samsung's NAND process technology. According to industry sources, Samsung recently completed the internal product release approval (PRA) for the V10 and has officially announced its mass production plan. However, the source noted that investment in large-scale mass production equipment has not yet been fully deployed, so initial production volumes are expected to remain low.
AI Demand Drives Accelerated Adoption of New Specification Storage
The current competition between South Korean and Japanese manufacturers is heavily concentrated on AI application scenarios. PCIe 6.0 targets the high-throughput storage needs of AI data centers, while UFS 5.0 addresses the rapidly increasing demand for local storage performance in on-device AI devices. Both product lines are highly aligned with the current expansion trajectory of the AI industry.
Kioxia's rapid follow-up indicates that the technology iteration cycle in the global NAND market is compressing, and the gap between leading manufacturers in the commercialization window for new specification products has narrowed significantly. For AI infrastructure investors, the performance bottleneck at the storage level is expected to be substantially alleviated between this year and next, following the large-scale production of these new specification products.
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