Software sales reached $3.3 bln in US in 2007

US retail sales of non-games software totaled $3.3 bln in 2007, a 15% increase over the $2.9 bln generated in 2006. Thanks in large part to new product introductions from companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Adobe, the most significant increases in revenue were seen in operating system, business, finance and imaging/graphics software categories, which posted respective dollar sales increases of 58%, 41%, 13% and 10%, respectively, over 2006. Losses were posted in personal productivity and education categories, which experienced respective dollar declines of 18% and 17% over the same time period. Despite flat sales in the overall system utilities category, security software dollar volume is up 16% for the year, driven primarily by a 55% increase in the security suite software category. The top four publishers of security suite software, Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and Microsoft, all experienced YTY dollar volume gains in 2007. According to NPD, Microsoft Office, in particular, generated strong sales in retail in 2007. The Office suite accounted for 17% of all dollar volume in the US retail PC software market, and Office 2007 unit sales experienced year YTY growth of 50%.