Sales of personal computer software in the US and Canada rose 8.3% to $10bn last year, the Software Publishers Association announced from Washington. In the fourth quarter, sales of applications rose 28% to $3.4bn. Reflecting continuing price attrition, unit sales rose much faster – 27% in the full year 1996, and 42% in the fourth quarter. Needless to say, Windows applications made up an overwhelming 81% of the total, with sales of $8.5bn, up 16.3% – and 32-bit applications are moving up surprisingly fast, and accounted for 48% of the total – but then not everyone committed to their 16-bit applications has to upgrade them every year. Applications for the Macintosh slumped 23% to $1.2bn for the year, and accounted for 11% of the application software market in 1996, but the software reflected the hardware market, and Mac software sales plummeted 30% to $333.6m in the quarter. Those that still prefer the quick and clean command line to the slooooow pictures are not dead yet: MS- DOS software did $558m, down 46.4%, in 1996, but it did plunge by 60% to $118m in the fourth quarter.
