Despite the pall of gloom hanging over the personal computer hardware market, sales of personal computer software are still reasonably lusty according to figures from the Software Publishers Association in Washington. North American software sales reached an estimated $1,200m measured at retail in the first quarter, an increase of 18% on the figure for a year ago, but international sales of US software companies were much more buoyant, rising 48%; combining the two gave an increase of 28%, reflecting the fact that the North American market is still substantially bigger. Within the figures, MS-DOS sales increased 5.8%, Macintosh sales were up 16.9% – all those Classics being fitted out with software – and education sales posted a striking 52.3% gain – Classics again? – closely followed by Destktop Publishing sales, up 50.3%. Word processors are still the largest category, at an estimated $223m. Another major contributor to growth was applications for Microsoft Corp’s Windows, which recorded an increase in sales of 222% in the US and Canada to displace Macintosh System as the second biggest environment after MS-DOS. Industry employment increased 21.9% in the period, indicating that the software industry remains optimistic about its future. The figures are derived from analysis of monthly sales data submitted to Arthur Andersen & Co by 150 of the leading US software publishers.
