El Segundo (CA) - Third party DRAM companies are following the current trend in the DRAM industry and are on track on to post record revenues for the year. According to a report released by Isuppli, third-party suppliers reported sales of about $5.1 billion in the first half of the year, which is up 15.7% from $4.3 billion in the same period of 2005.

Ally Liao, an analyst with Isuppli said that the market is expected to post revenues of about $11.3 billion for the year : "This strong expansion reflects robust conditions in the market for the DRAM chips used in such modules. Global DRAM semiconductor revenue is expected to rise to $30.6 billion in 2006, up 24 percent from $24.8 billion in 2005," the analyst noted.

Kingston kept its commanding lead in the market and recorded sales of $853 million, which translates into a 16.7% market share. Smart Modular follows in second place with sales of $274 million and 5.4% market share. A-Data and Crucial are raked third and fourth with $240 and $234 million, respectively. Taiwanese vendor TwinMOS was the clear winner in the second half : The company jumped from position 13 in 2005 to 5 in the first half of 2006, boosted by a merger with memory Devices and an expansion into the Chinese market.

The top-10 is rounded out by MA Labs, Ramaxel, Corsair, Apacer and Transcend. Apacer was hit by a 26.4% revenue decline, which, according to Liao, came after the company "decided to expand its business from the mainstream PC area to the higher-margin industrial computer segment - and to the market for VLP (Very-Low Profile) Dual Inline Memory Modules (DIMMs) for servers."