Office 2007 spurs boom in software market

Spurred by sales of Microsoft's Office 2007, the software market hit its highest level since 1999, according to a report released yesterday by the NPD Group.

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Overall, the US non-game PC software market at retail stores totalled $3.3bn in 2007, a 15 per cent increase over the $2.9bn generated in 2006. The rise is even more notable, as sales had been essentially flat from 2000 through 2006.

A lot of that is due to Microsoft, largely because of Office but also because of Vista's debut. According to NPD's Chris Swenson, 80 per cent of the total growth in the market can be attributed to the release of these two products.

Security software sales also increased 55 per cent compared with the prior year, Swenson said.

Although boxed copy sales of Vista have been down over XP's first year, they were nonetheless up 40 per cent from last year's Windows sales.

Sales of Office 2007 are doing even better, up 100 per cent compared with sales of Office 2003 in its initial months. That led Office to account for 17 per cent (by dollar volume) of all software sold at retail stores last year.

Swenson said: "It's [Office 2007] a huge hit."

Swenson also noted that NPD is not seeing significant sales of boxed copies of Windows XP, suggesting to him that the downgrade phenomenon is overblown.

Original article: Office 2007 sales spur software market from CNET News.com