Market researcher International Data Corp estimates that the Unix relational database market was worth $1,530m last year, up 35.9%, with database licences accounting for $1,000m and tool licences the remainder. IDC forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 17.5% for the total market through 1998 to a market worth $3,445m. Combined international markets were worth more in 1993 than the US market – Europe accounted for $769.5m, up 21.2% from 1992’s value but down from the 51% growth registered from 1991 to 1992; the rest of the world, including Japan grew 58.1% to $253m and the US market grew 54.5% to $765.6m. The leading supplier was Oracle Corp, with 38.3% of the total market in 1993, down from 44.3% in 1992, though its 1993 share was worth $588.3m, up 17.4%. Informix Software Inc’s software licensing revenues grew 22.6% to $247.7m in 1993, although its overall share of the market decreased to 16.1% from 17.9%. Sybase Inc earned $228.9m on product licence revenues, up 63.5%, and increased its overall share of the market to 14.9% from 12.4%. Ingres Corp, now owned by Computer Associates International Inc, achieved revenues of $114.7m, up 18.2%, though its share declined to 7.5% from 8.6%. Progress Software Corp’s licensing business grew 57.8% to $63.1m and it increased its share to 4.1% from 3.5%. Unify Corp hit $30m licence sales, up 11.1%, with 2% of the market, down from 2.4% last time. Sales of other Unix relational database software licences grew 113.4% to $262.5m, a share of 17.1%, up from 10.9% in 1992.

Little competition from Windows NT

In the regions, Oracle made $229.4m from a 30% share of the US market; $194.1m for 37.6% of the European market and $164.7m for a 65.1% share in the rest of the world, excluding application and personal productivity licensing revenue. Informix split $118.9 US (15.7%), $101.6m Europe (19.7%) and $27.2m Japan (10.3%), again without applications or personal productivity software licence revenues. Sybase earned $169.4m in the US (22.4%), $45.8m in Europe (8.9%) and $13.7m in Japan (5.2%). Ingres hit $57.4m (7.6%), $50.5m (9.8%) and $6.9m (2.6%). Progress made $27.1m (3.6%), $26.5m (5.1%) and $9.5m (3.6%) and Unify split $18.9m (2.5%), $6.9m (1.3%) and $4.2m (1.6%). IDC notes the uptake of Sybase System 10 in financial markets, driven by its relationship with Sun Microsystems Inc, the popularity of the Progess 4GL and the momentum in medium to large businesses generated by Oracle7. Sun systems accounted for 27.2%, or $272.1m, of the $995.5m generated by sales of Unix database engine and server software licences. IBM Corp (AIX) was second at $195.9m (19.6%), Hewlett-Packard Co $181.1m (18.1%), Unix-on-iAPX-86 $99m (9.9%), Digital Equipment Corp Ultrix/OSF/1 $57.4m (5.7%) and other $193.9m (19.4%). IDC expects little serious competition from Windows NT until Daytona with SQLserver 95, plus robust database engines and tool offerings emerge late in 1995 or early 1996. Of the four object-oriented markets IDC watches, object programming is the largest, worth $320m in 1993. Object database sales were around $75m, object software engineering tools $40m and distributed object management $10m or so. All are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 30% between 1993 and 1998 – object databases by as much as 80% – when it is estimated the object market will be worth $4,000m. IDC reckons that the worldwide market for applications, tools and system software was worth $69,500m in 1993 against the $71,100m it had forecasted: $29,150m was spent on applications; $19,560m on tools and $20,740m on system software. IBM mainframe, other mainframe, VAX, other mini, AS/400 and 16-bit personal computer operating systems accounted for 73% of worldwide software revenues according to operating environments. All these companies will lose share between now and 1998, the Framingham, Massachusetts researcher believes, although 16-bit MS-DOS and Windows losses will be small, by which time they will account for 56% of the systems for which software is bought, according to the market research gro

up. Network operating systems, Macintosh, NT, OS/2 and Unix will all increase their total share from 27% of the market in 1993, to some 44% in 1998, with Unixes increasing more than other operating system. In the regions, the US software market was worth $32,000m last year, Europe made up $24,000m, Japan and the rest of the world $7,000m each. IDC predicts that the Japanese market will grow at a compound annual growth of 17.7% to 1998, the rest of the world at 14.7%, the US 12.7% and Europe 9%. US vendors supply 89% of software bought in the US, 72% in the rest of the world, 62% in Europe, 54% in Japan and 75% of all packages worldwide.