Samsung Electronics led the global solid state drive market last year with its market share double that of its U.S. rival Intel, according to data released by IHS. However, Intel, which remains the world's largest and highest-valued semiconductor chip maker, still leads the overall market with 3 percentage points more market share than Samsung.

In the SSD market, Samsung Electronics recorded US$3.996 billion (4.31 trillion won) in sales last year in the global SSD market with a market share of 34 percent, while Intel posted US$1.99 billion (2.15 trillion won) in the same period with a market share of 17 percent.

In 2014, Intel’s sales increased by almost 50 percent to beat Sandisk by a small margin and maintain the number two position. But Samsung’s growth rate was even higher with 53 percent to top, as it started mass-producing SSDs based on its vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology.

IHS also expected that Samsung’s market share will reach 35 percent this year, while Intel will maintain its current market share to around 17 percent, widening the gap further. Also, the figures of Samsung and Intel in 2016 are expected to be 35 percent and 16 percent.

Samsung has introduced a new product line-up including Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe)-based SSDs and the portable SSD T1. The S. Korean giant also gained a competitive edge over its rivals by starting the mass production of TLC-applied 3-bit V-NAND which will be considered as a game changer in the next-generation SSD market.

According to the IHS forecast by need of demand of NAND flash in the market in the next five years from 2014 to 2019, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of demand for PCs, including SSDs, will reach 51.9 percent, surpassing the figure of mobile devices with 49.7 percent during the same period.

IHS also expected that the USB and flash card market would show a minus growth with 0.2 percent, while the growth of chips for tablet PCs will stay at 39.4 percent.