1) How big is the software industry per year? 
 
2) How much of this is from "big" software companies who each own more
than 1% of the total industry, vs. from smaller companies and 
independent developers? (E.g., not counting Microsoft, Adobe, 
Intuit...) 
 
3) The above info for consumers, and for small business. (E.g., not
counting enterprise, government, etc.)

Hello englishpaulm-ga,

As previously mentioned, the best and most recent data is proprietary
and reports can be purchased from anywhere between several hundred and
several thousand dollars apiece. However, for the information you are
requesting, I will use sources that are a few years older as they are
freely available and some also provide projected numbers that will
give you a better idea of the current size of the market.

An in-depth study from the US Small Business Association, has quite a
number of facts relevent to your query:

Worldwide Package Software Market - Software Type Segments (1998)

System-level software (30%)
Applications software (47%)
Applications tools (23%)

Software Industry Growth - Global and National Sales

"The worldwide packaged software market grew 11 percent from almost
$122 billion in 1997 to $135
billion in 1998, and is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of
12 percent for the next few years, exceeding $220 billion by 2002.

According to International Data Corp. (IDC), worldwide revenues for
the packaged software industry
reached $135 billion in 1998. U.S. sales accounted for 47 percent of
the $155 billion global market in
1999. The table below shows the estimated growth in each individual
sector for 1996, 1997 and
forecasts for 2002:

Total Revenue, US Packaged Software Market(in billion $)

Type of Software	1996	1997	2002
System-level		$10.7	$12.6	$21.3
Application tools	 13.9	 16.1	 30.5
Application solutions	 25.7	 29.8	 51.4
Total			$146.6	$45.9	$103.2

Source: US Industry Trade & Outlook, ‘98"

World's Top Software Suppliers (1998)

1. Microsoft ($16,327 million)
2. IBM ($11,863 million)
3. Oracle Corp ($5,318 million)
4. Computer Associates ($4,854 million)
5. Hitachi ($4,184 million)

Source: US Industry & Trade Outlook 2000

International Market

"The worldwide packaged software market enjoyed revenues of $155.3
billion in 1999.20 The U.S. market
accounts for approximately 47 percent of this figure. IDC estimates
that by 2002 the worldwide packaged software market should reach $268
billion. Other noteworthy markets include Western Europe with 34
percent of the worldwide market share in 1998, and Japan with 7.6
percent of the total revenues."

Country		Share(%) Compound Annual Growth 98-03 (%)
Japan		7.6		13
Germany		8.6		13
Italy		2.4		 8
Norway		0.5		13
Korea		0.3		18
Brazil		0.4		12
South Africa	0.6		20
China		0.6		48
Israel		0.4		 8
Mexico		0.3		12
Poland		0.2		12
India		0.1		39

Source: International Data Corporation

There is also additional information in Section VII of this report of
the consumers in this market.

http://www.sbtdc.org/pdf/software.pdf

This next report was quite informative in a number of areas:

http://istclass.syr.edu/~ist775/fall97/software_profile.html

This list of the top 100 computer companies and their revenues (1995)
can be used to determine the total revenue earned by "big" software
companies by summing the total revenues from all companies in the
software category and subtracting that from the total market size for
that year:

Company		Revenue ($Billion)

Adobe Systems . . . 0.6 *
Attachmate . . . 0.4 * 
Autodesk . . . 0.5 * 
BMC software . . . 0.3 * 
Borland . . . 0.3 * 
Cadence . . . 0.4 * 
Computer Associates . . . 3.1 **
Computer Science . . . 4.1 ** 
Computer Task Group . . . 0.3 **
Computervision . . . 0.6 ** 
Compuware . . . 0.5 ** 
EDS . . . 12 **
Electronic Arts . . . 0.4 * 
IBM . . . 69 ** 
ISM . . . 0.4 *
Information Builders . . . 0.3 *
Informix Software . . . 0.8 * 
Intuit . . . 0.2 * 
Lotus . . . 1.0 * 
Microsoft . . . 7.4 ** 
National Computer Systems . . . 0.3 * 
Novell . . . 2.2 ** 
Oracle . . . 3.2 ** 
SAS Institute . . . 0.5 * 
SHL Systemhouse . . . 0.9 * 
Silicon Graphics . . . 2.4 ** 
System Software Associates . . . 0.4 *
Sterling Software . . . 0.5 * 
Sybase . . . 1.0 ** 
Symantec . . . 0.3 * 

TOTAL Revenue	$114.3 Billion

Consider the statement from above that worldwide packaged software
market was almost $122 billion in 1997, I would estimate that the same
value for 1995 was $115-116 billion. This means that the tope 30
companies in this market (from the list above) controlled 98-99% of
the overall market.


http://internetvalley.com/1195top100am_vendors.html

There was also a list of the Top 100 Companies in the DP industry (a
segment that is tied to software) publish by Datamation in 1997.
Although the scanned magazine page is not very clear you should be
able to make out the values if you zoom in to 200%:

http://www.four-phase.org/pictures/EricFernandez/Datamation%20top%20100.pdf


I hope the above information has sufficiently answered your
question..if you need any clarification please let me know and I'll be
happy to assist you.

Cheers!

answerguru-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by englishpaulm-ga on 31 Jul 2003 18:29 PDT

Thanks for the quick and awesome response. Were you able to find any
information for (1) and (2) as it pertains to (3)-- namely for
software purchased by consumers and small business (not counting
software purchased by large enterprise companies, governments, etc)?

---

Clarification of Answer by answerguru-ga on 31 Jul 2003 19:52 PDT

Hi englishpaulm-ga,

In response to your clarification request:

Since no standards exist for categorizing customers (due to the
privacy issues related to consumer profiling), there is no way to
meaningfully obtain this data from various vendors. In most cases, the
individual products that vendors sell can be used by both individuals,
enterprise, and government, so that also cannot be used as a means of
determining market size by consumer segments.

answerguru-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by englishpaulm-ga on 01 Aug 2003 05:54 PDT

I have read studies in prior years which focus explicitly on the
consumer software market, and others on the small business software
market. Such studies are typically underwritten by software companies
who focus on consumers or small business.

It is true that sometimes software designed for one audience is used
by another, but there are definitely studies which categorize revenue
by target type of user. (Software companies then typically do surveys
of their user bases to get a guestimate as to what percentage of their
actual users vary from their target.)

But if you can't find data on (3), I can try to find it elsewhere.

Thanks so much for your response!

---

Clarification of Answer by answerguru-ga on 01 Aug 2003 06:22 PDT

That's absolutely true, although those studies fall under the
proprietary categorization (due to the cost and effort of conductin
them) and are likely to be far more focused than what you are looking
for (ie. a specific type of software). I can't seem to find anything
that's freely available that covers the entire market - hopefully you
will be able to find it elsewhere.

answerguru-ga

"Answerguru" sent a quick and detailed response to #1&2 on my list,
but was unable to find anything for #3. I greatly appreciate the help
though!

englishpaulm,

Regarding sales of business software, this link provides info that may
be of some use:

http://www.npdtechworld.com/techServlet?nextpage=pr_body_it.html&content_id=414

~pinkfreud

Here's another link that might be helpful:

http://softbase.150m.com/index.html#7