Software Market is Doing Well

While hardware, smart devices and mobile market isn't doing so well lately, Software market seems to be doing pretty well. Good news for us developers, huh!

Last week, Microsoft reported its quarterly report and Microsoft clearly showed signs of improvements by growing revenue almost $21 billion. Today, IDC released the latest results for worldwide software for 2012, the worldwide software market grew 3.6% year over year reaching a total market size of $342 billion.

"The global software market, comprised of a multi-layered collection of technologies and solutions, is growing more slowly in this period of economic uncertainty. Yet there is strong growth in selective areas. The management and leveraging of information for competitive advantage is driving growth in markets associated with Big Data and analytics. Similarly, rapid growth in cloud deployments is fueling growth in application areas associated with social business and customer experience. Both these initiatives require a reliable and secure infrastructure, driving investments in security and system/network management. The combination of these forces is advancing the growth to what IDC has termed the third platform," said Henry D. Morris, Senior Vice President for Worldwide Software, Services and Executive Advisory Research.

The following table shows top vendors, their revenues and market share.