South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. saw its market share in the global mobile memory industry reach 50 percent in the second quarter thanks to growing demand for mobile devices, a market researcher said Wednesday.

Samsung Electronics sold about 1.41 billion units of mobile dynamic random access memories in the second quarter of this year, according to a report by market researcher IHS iSuppli.

Its global market share stood at 49.4 percent at the end of June.

The numbers are calculated by converting all mobile DRAMs that the company sold into sales of 1-gigabit memory chips.

Demand for mobile DRAMs has been on the rise in tandem with growing demand for mobile devices, in particular smartphones, which usually require high-capacity, high-speed memory chips.

In the second quarter, about 2.85 billion units of mobile DRAMs were sold, up 20.7 percent from the previous quarter, the data showed.

Samsung was followed by its Korean rival SK Hynix Inc., which had a global market share of 23.6 percent in the April-June period.

Their combined market share rose to 73 percent during the period.

Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc. came next with a 21.9 percent share, trailed by U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. with 4.3 percent, according to the data. (Yonhap News)