I'm looking for sources of information concerning the size and
composition of the US market for genealogical software.  I'd like to
know the total dollar size as well as the number of units sold. 
Historical data points showing how the market has grown would be
great, as would any estimates for the next couple of years.  Non-US
data would also be interesting.

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Clarification of Question by pataphysicist-ga on 24 Jul 2004 13:09 PDT

Hi Neil, thanks for your comments.  I'm looking for information about
the retail market.  The end users of this software would probably be
individuals who are working on their own family trees, and perhaps
also specialists who do genealogical research for others.  Examples of
this kind of software are: "The Master Genealogist", "Legacy Family
Tree Deluxe", "Family Tree Maker", "RootsMagic", "Reunion", "Heredis",
(by no means an exhaustive list).  I'm not interested in PDA software
or web sites.

Dear neilzero-ga,

Since many genealogy software programs have come and gone in the past
10 years, and most are produced by private companies, it is hard to
come up with a total market composition for genealogy software.

That being said, Family Tree Maker (now owned by MyFamily.com and
published by Encore, but previously published by Broderbund) is by far
the best-selling genealogy software on the market. It has been around
the longest of most of the programs still in use and is the one found
in most retail stores, such as Target, Amazon, Walmart, etc. From the
recent press release (March 2004) announcing the arrangement with
Encore to take over publication of Family Tree Maker, "Family Tree
Maker(R) dominates its product category, commanding a 92% market share
among all genealogy software titles with more than five million copies
sold."
http://news.genealogytoday.com/inbox/2004/encor0309.html

From the press release for the most recent version (dated Sept. 2003)
"On the market for over 10 years, Family Tree Maker has sold more than
5
million units and is a comprehensive tool for users to discover, document and
distribute family findings."
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro_stories.pl?ACCT=147509&TICK=MYFAM&STORY=/www/story/09-29-2003/0002025425&EDATE=Sep+29,+2003

In terms of historical growth, again I turn to Family Tree Maker - an
excellent benchmark for the genealogy software market:

Oct 2002 press release (version 10) - "Released in 1989, Family Tree
Maker has sold over 4.5 million units..."
http://www.genealogy.com/press-100102.html

Aug 1998 news story (version 5) - "Broderbund [Family Tree Maker]
claims to lead the field in "family tree" software, with more than 2
million copies sold."
http://archive.tri-cityherald.com/genealogy/DAY/day81.html


Other, more generic, historical data:

Feb 1998 lecture - "Genealogy software is no longer a cottage
industry. It is big business with Brøderbund, Corel, and Intuit now
among the major players. Sales volumes are in the hundreds of
thousands of units..."
http://www.rh.edu/~rhb/css/css_february.html

Total dollar size for the genealogy software market is even more
difficult, considering the major players are all privately-held
companies. Also, genealogy software prices have ranged from FREE to
$99 per package. Instead, I am including some more general figures for
the genealogy industry:

Apr 2004 - "The privately held MyFamily.com does not release specific
earnings, but Sherman [Craig Sherman, chief marketing and revenue
officer] said sales have increased 20-fold over the past six years." 
... "MyFamily.com has 1.6 million paying subscribers, with more than
10 million visitors logging on to its family of Web sites, which
includes MyFamily.com, Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com and RootsWeb.com.
MyFamily.com also sells Family Tree Maker-brand software, publishes
Ancestry and Genealogical Computing magazines, and numerous books and
computer databases."

Sep 2003 - "MyFamily, based in Provo, Utah, exploded into the world of
online genealogy, going from 100,000 paid subscribers in September
1999 to more than 800,000 within three years. It is now the
fifth-largest paid subscription site, with more than 1 million
subscriptions."
http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid11_gci921944,00.html?Exclusive=True

Jan 2002 - "The Internet genealogy industry is worth an estimated $200
million annually."
http://genealogy.about.com/library/weekly/aa011502a.htm


Marketing research by Lasting Links:

--"A Wall Street Journal analyst estimates the current genealogy
market at about $200 million."

--"If we multiply the 211.6 million U.S. adults over age 18 by the
7.1% number who say they are 'involved a great deal' in genealogy
[Maritz], that indicates that as many as 15 million adults may be
involved a great deal in genealogy."

--"If we multiply the 15.0 million persons involved in genealogy by
the $159.00 per year average annual expenditure on genealogy products
and services from our survey [2001], this means the potential market
could possibly be as large as $2.4 billion"

http://www.lastinglinks.com/provider/MarketingBrochure.pdf



Search strategies:
genealogy software "copies sold"
family tree software "copies sold"
"genealogy industry" survey
"genealogy market" survey
"genealogy sales"

I hope this helps answer your questions concerning the genealogy
software market. I am sorry that I couldn't be more specific, but
privately-held companies don't easily release their sales and earnings
figures.

Best of luck! Please let me know if I can help you further.

-inquisitive-ga

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Clarification of Answer by inquisitive-ga on 26 Jul 2004 23:51 PDT

Dear pataphysicist-ga,

My apologies for addressing you as neilzero-ga in my earlier answer. I
mistakenly copied his name from his comment, instead of your name from
the question.

Regards,

-inquisitive-ga

Thanks inquisive-ga, this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

I think you need to define the limits of genealogical software. Are
you thinking the massive data storage needed by large insitutions such
as the Mormon Church, the USA government or individual researchers?
Are you thinking children's instructional or advanced researchers? Are
you thinking of genealogies which can be commputer generated at low
cost, or do you require a very low error rate? Perhaps all of the
above?   Neil