DRAMeXchange's Assistant Vice President Avril Wu noted that mobile DRAM made up nearly 40% of all DRAM shipments, more than ever before. Although mobile memory's average selling price fell slightly by 5% in the fourth quarter, bit shipment volume rose due to sustained smartphone demand growth driven by iPhone 6/6 Plus. This in turn contributed to the continuing growth of the mobile DRAM revenue worldwide.

Wu added that even though the first quarter of 2015 is an off-peak season, mobile DRAM prices during this period will be more stable than the prior quarter with an estimated decline of only 3%. "Mobile DRAM prices are unlikely to fall in 2015 because the next generation iPhone is expected to increase its memory to 2GB, "said Wu," and in fact, prices may rise in the third quarter. "

The highlight of mobile memory industry for 2015 will be the next-gen LPDDR4. Currently, Qualcomm's 810 is the first chip to support the new technology, and a few flagship smartphones with LPDDR4 will arrive in the second quarter.

However, LPDDR4's manufacturing costs remain high and has yet to achieve price parity with LPDDR3. Therefore, LPDDR4 is not anticipated to become the market mainstream until the second half of 2016. This year's mobile demand growth will come from the pressure for increasing device memory.

In particular, midlevel smartphones will be required to upgrade to 1.5GB or 2GB in order to get better performance from Android 5.0 since 1GB is not enough for the operating system to run smoothly. This device memory upgrade pressure will boost mobile DRAM demand significantly.