Selling retail boxes of PC software has been a declining business, for obvious reasons, but the American market is up by almost 10% this year, on NPD figures. At eWeek, Joe Wilcox has blogged the numbers in PC Software's Great Year. He says:
The big sales driver: Office 2007, which is selling like gangbusters. When comparing Office 2007 sales to version 2003 during the same early sales period, unit sales of the newer productivity suite are about double the older one, according to NPD.
"Office commands 17.4% of all PC software dollar volume, including PC games," [Chris Swenson, NPD's director of software industry analysis] said. "When people go to the store to buy software, there's a good chance they'll end up buying Microsoft Office."
The category with biggest year-over-year growth change and highest average selling price is operating systems. There, Windows Vista overwhelming leads the category, which is up nearly 50% from 2007. Vista's sales pull is surprising considering lackluster sales comparisons to Windows XP.
In dollar terms, Windows has 78.2%, Mac OS X 21.3% and Linux 0.5% of the US retail market this year to October.
NPD says Adobe's Creative Suite 3 is also a "huge success story," as is Apple's Final Cut Studio.
Obviously it won't last. There won't be a similar string of big products released next year, though there will be a new Microsoft Office for Mac....
