The global software market rose 5.5 percent to $369 billion in 2013 against 4.3 percent in 2012, said IDC.
Eurozone recovery and above-average growth in the United States were some of the growth drivers.
Software for data management, data access, and collaborative information sharing lead the growth in the software industry.
Applications; Application Development & Deployment (AD&D); and Systems Infrastructure Software grew between 5.4 percent and 5.6 percent.
AD&D segment, which comprised nearly 23 percent of software revenues in 2013, grew 5.6 percent. Growth in the AD&D segment was driven by the performance of the Structured Data Management and the Data Access, Analysis, and Delivery secondary markets with 7.3 percent and 6.0 percent growth rates, respectively.
Oracle continued to lead the AD&D segment with steady market share of 21.5 percent, followed by IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and SAS. Among these vendors, Microsoft and SAP stood out by gaining the most market share.
In the Applications primary market segment, which comprised 50 percent of total software revenue, growth was 5.5 percent.
Collaborative Applications and Content Applications grew above 10 percent. While the former is driven by Enterprise Social Networks and Team Collaborative Applications adoption, the latter is driven by the Search and Content Analytics, which grew at 13.2 percent. The Big Data and analytics adoption trend was largely responsible for this market growth.
Microsoft led the Applications primary market with 14.1 percent of market share and gaining more than 1 point of share, followed by SAP, Oracle, IBM, and Intuit. Microsoft and Intuit experienced the highest growth rates.
In the Systems Infrastructure Software primary market segment, which comprised 27 percent of total software revenue and grew 5.5 percent in 2013, the System Software secondary segment grew more than 8 percent driven by the launching of Windows 8 and Virtual Machine and Cloud System Software adoption.
Microsoft has improved its leadership in the Systems Infrastructure Software overall with 29.3 percent of market share, gaining more than 1.5 points of share, followed by IBM, Symantec, EMC, and VMware.
