Introduction – The Rising Significance of Software Markets

Why spend time thinking talking and writing about marketing in the software industry? Here are three answers.

Firstly, the argument of size. It should come as no surprise to anyone who spends time using a computer or portable device that the software industry is big business. There are strong brands – Microsoft, Google, Facebook – and a multiplicity of types of software for business or leisure use, often with price tags in three or four figures. Exactly how big is the software industry though? The industry body, the SIIA [Software and Information Industry Association] estimated in conjunction with Datamonitor that the worldwide value of software sales in 2008 was US$304bn and estimate a 2013 value of US$457bn (Datamonitor 2008). Microsoft employees 100,000 people, a similar number to Exxon Mobil.

Secondly, the argument of cohort. If you are a relatively young person, software and the hardware it runs on has probably been fully integrated into many aspects of your life – you write email using a web-based application – a word we’ll see again shortly – like Googlemail or Yahoo, you use one or more of a console, PC or portable device to play games and make calls, you relax to music delivered by data files passing through something like iTunes and you sign up for tutorials and submit assignments via a VLE. You are as likely as not to be aware of many different brand names and the people and companies behind them. Software is important to you, it is going to go on being important for the rest of your life. If you aren’t involved with the marketing of software as a career, you are necessarily still going to be involved as a customer.

Thirdly, the argument of culture. Software is now advertised on the high street and TV. There are films about the development of software – The Social Network, Pirates of Silicon Valley and one of my all time favouritess, Sneakers – software capability and fallibility is now a common plot device in literature and drama. Images, tropes and concepts from software have been co-opted into polular culture. See above.

Datamonitor (2008) Software: Global Industry Guide New York, Datamonitor