Seoul, May 26 (IANS): Samsung Electronics and SK hynix took up more than half of the global NAND flash memory chip market in the first quarter, a report showed on Thursday, up by more than 8 per cent from the previous quarter.

Samsung, the world's largest memory chip maker, expanded its market share in the January-March period due largely to a fall in shipment by Japanese chipmaker Kioxia, following contamination incidents at its facilities, industry tracker TrendForce said.

NAND flash is a type of non-volatile storage that does not require power to store data.

In the first quarter, Samsung's NAND flash sales rose 3.4 percent to US$6.32 billion and its market share went up by 2.2 percentage points to 35.3 percent from the previous quarter, reports Yonhap news agency.

That compared with the 3.0 per cent quarterly decline in the global sales, which totaled at $17.9 billion.

Samsung's growth in sales was driven by sluggish supply from Japan's Kioxia and San Jose-based Western Digital, an influx of rush orders and solid state drive (SSD) orders from North American corporate clients, TrendForce said.

SK hynix and its US subsidiary Solidigm (combined) rose to the second spot with an 18 per cent market share.

SK hynix set up Solidigm early this year following the completion of the first phase of Intel NAND and SSD business acquisition in December.

The combined sales of the two companies declined 10.7 percent and their market share also slightly dropped by 1.5 percentage points, compared to the previous quarter when the two operated independently.

TrendForce attributed the decline to sluggish demand for smartphones in China and falling contract prices.