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Worldwide software market grew 5.5 pc YoY in 2013, says IDC

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Soma Tah
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FRAMINGHAM, USA: The recently published International Data Corporation (IDC) study says that for 2013, the worldwide software market grew 5.5 percent year over year reaching a total market size of $369 billion. This was higher than the 4.3 percent growth experienced in 2012, a result of the Eurozone recovery and continued above-average growth in the United States. IDC expects this moderately positive scenario to continue for several more years.

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"Data provides the edge to companies that can leverage their information for competitive advantage -- with new products and services, and an enriched customer experience. Software for data management, data access, and collaborative information sharing continues to lead the growth in the overall software industry," said Henry D. Morris, senior VP for Worldwide Software, Services and Executive Advisory Research.

Three primary segments comprise the total software market in IDC's software taxonomy: Applications; Application Development & Deployment (AD&D); and Systems Infrastructure Software. The three segments grew between 5.4 percent and 5.6 percent meaning that no individual segment had a standout performance in 2013. Nevertheless, within the primary segments there were several function-specific types of software that experienced high rates of growth.

Among the three primary segments, the AD&D segment, which comprised nearly 23 percent of total software revenues in 2013, was the fastest growing market with a 5.6 percent year-over-year growth rate. Growth in the AD&D segment was largely driven by the performance of the Structured Data Management and the Data Access, Analysis, and Delivery secondary markets with 7.3 percent and 6.0 percent growth rates, respectively.

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Advanced Analytics Software and Database Management Systems (DBMS) solutions are pushing the growing trend for these markets because of widening Big Data and Analytics adoption. Oracle continued to lead the AD&D segment with steady market share of 21.5 percent, followed by IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and SAS. Among these vendors, Microsoft and SAP stood out by gaining the most market share year over year.

In the Applications primary market segment, which comprised 50 percent of total software revenue, year-over-year growth for 2013 was 5.5 percent, which is similar to the total software market average. Within this market segment, Collaborative Applications and Content Applications stood out with year-over-year growth rates above 10 percent. While the former is driven by Enterprise Social Networks and Team Collaborative Applications adoption, the latter is driven by the Search and Content Analytics, which grew at 13.2 percent year over year.

The Big Data and analytics adoption trend was largely responsible for this market growth. From a vendor perspective, Microsoft led the Applications primary market in 2013 with 14.1 percent of market share and gaining more than 1 point of share year over year, followed by SAP, Oracle, IBM, and Intuit. Microsoft and Intuit experienced the highest growth rates.

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In the Systems Infrastructure Software primary market segment, which comprised 27 percent of total software revenue and grew 5.5 percent year over year in 2013, the System Software secondary segment grew more than 8 percent year over year driven by the launching of Windows 8 and Virtual Machine and Cloud System Software adoption. Microsoft has improved its leadership in the Systems Infrastructure Software overall with 29.3 percent of market share, gaining more than 1.5 points of share, followed by IBM, Symantec, EMC, and VMware.

On a regional basis, the second half of the year confirmed what we saw in the first half. Latin and North America were the top growing regions in 2013 followed by Western Europe, which continued the recovery path closing the year with a 6.6 percent growth rate. On the other hand, Japan couldn't work around the effects of yen devaluation and ended up with a year-over-year decline of 11.6 percent in U.S. dollars.

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