Well, OK, lets see.
DDR is not SIMO's area. I think that's a DRAM term. Memory today is mainly DRAM (not SIMO), HBM (not SIMO) and NAND (SIMO).
For NAND, there are different types of NAND. First there was SLC (single layer cell), then MLC (multi layer cell), then TLC (tender loving care, no Triple Layer cell) and finally QLC (Quad layer cell). Each of these added a bit or something to a single cell, so the QLC has the highest capacity and the SLC the lowest capacity. SIMO says they are great at QLC controllers, and since QLC has the highest capacity (at the lowest cost) everyone says the enterprise market is moving to QLC.
That's just some terms. As for SIMO, well.....
SIMO's traditional controller products are used in cell phones and PCs. These devices use NAND memory chips which are made by one of the six global NAND memory makers. Those NAND memory makers also make controllers. The controller chip and the memory chip are two different chips. The NAND memory chip stores the data (a bunch of ones and zeros). The controller chip is the brains of the system, controlling the interface between everything on the device that uses memory, and the NAND memory chip.
OK?
For cell phones the current connectivity technology used to be eMMC, and now is UFS. UFS 4.1 is the current high end version, but UFS 3.1 down to UFS 2.2 are still in use, depending on the sophistification of the cell phone. SIMO says they have about 20%-23% global market share in cell phone NAND controllers, with their bread and butter being non-Samsung Android. SIMO isn't in iPhone. Samsung uses mostly it's own NAND and it's own controllers. Everything else (phones which are not Apple and not Samsung) is up for grabs, and SIMO and other UFS controller makers (often inside a NAND memory maker) compete for the design slots.
For PCs the current connectivity technolgy is PCIe. SIMO says they have about 30% market share in PCIe gen4. PCIe gen5 began shipping last quarter, and SIMO says they think they will have more than 50% market share when the PC industry moves from gen4 to gen5. This segment is 50%-60% of SIMO's total business, so this market share gain will drive nice revenue growth for SIMO in 2026 and 2027.
Design wins for PCs and cell phone are won well in advance of production (12-24 months). So SIMO has known that they're going to do well in PCs since H2 2024, and the growth is finally starting right now, and should continue through 2027 as the industry shifts to PCIe gen5.
Mon Titan is a different controller with a non-consumer device market. Unlike the paragraphs above which discuss controllers for use in consumer products, Mon Titan is an enterprise flash controller. This means it goes into hardware systems and data centers and it's part of a larger enterprise system. This means higher speeds, higher capacities, higher prices and higher gross margins, and also a longer design win cycle and a longer time to enter production. Once it enters production, it should have a much longer life cycle than consumer products. Mon Titan now has 2 "tier 1" customers, and 4 customers over all. SIMO has been working with all six of those guys to get Mon Titan qualified for useage in whatever those guys are building, and once it's qualified and those guys (hopefully) build whatever it is they're building, they will buy Mon Titan controller chips for years and years and years as the continually build out and expand whatever it is that they're building.
Mon Titan is shipping a small amount now, and the story is that the volumes are supposed to ramp meaningfully (whatever that means) in H2 2026. A year ago we thought volumes may ramp in H1 2026, but the memory crunch of H2 2025 (all three types of memory have much larger than forecast demand, and prices went much higher for everything) caused the ramps to be pushed back until the NAND makers can increase their output and lower prices. The recent memory demand IS NOT driven by SIMO's core consumer products segment. It is driven by AI data centers gobbling up all the memory they can get, and that is causing the NAND makers to prioritize production of high end large capacity solid state drives over every other type of NAND memory. Mon Titan targets this high demand segment, but Mon Titan competes directly with the NAND makers who make their own enterprise NAND controller, and so they give themselves preference to customer demands, making it hard for SIMO's customer to buy NAND and package it with Mon Titan.
Hope that helps! |
