PCs during the second quarter accounted for less than 50% of the DRAM market. This is the first time that this market share for the largest consumer of DRAM has dropped to less than half of the entire market.

In the second quarter, PCs made up 49% of the DRAM market, compared to 50.2% in the first quarter. The average PC share of the memory market trended around 55% from the first quarter of 2008 till the last quarter of 2011.

IHS iSuppli forecasts that the portion of market share for DRAM in the PC market could drop another 6% to end up at 42.8% by Q4 2013. The share for tablets is however expected to continue to rise. Shipments for DRAM in tablets rose to 2.7% in the second quarter. This trend is expected to continue with an increase of more than 4% to hit a total of 6.9% by Q4 2013.

The share of DRAM for smartphones too will increase by nearly 7% during the same period and together with tablets, the combined market share by Q4 2013 could reach 26.7%. This is almost double of the 14.1% in the first quarter of this year.

DRAM is also used in devices like LCD TVs, set top boxes and digital cameras. This proportion makes up almost one-third of its shipments.