A strange picture of the European personal computer software market is presented by first quarter figures from the US Software Publishers Association, which show the UK and Ireland booming and Germany with Austria slumping. Compared with first quarter 1991, sales in the British Isles were up 37% at $107m, making it the largest market; Germany and Austria slipped 8% to $95m, and France dipped 5% to $70m; in 1991 they had been the regions with the highest growth rates, at 56% and 37% respectively. North American software firms’ sales increased 10% to $398m in Western Europe overall during the period according to the figures, which were compiled from the returns from 39 US-based software firms, including all the majors. Arthur Andersen & Co prepared the report. In other markets, sales in Scandinavia grew 30% to $42m; in Benelux 18% to $38m; in Iberia, 16% to $17m, Italy grew 5% to $16m, and Switzerland grew 25% to $13m. Sales of Windows applications outpaced those for MS-DOS for the first time, accounting for 49% of the total against 24% a year ago and growing 123% by value; MS-DOS applications were 41% of the total, down from 66%. Macintosh applications sales held steady at 8% of the market, but grew only 7%, slower than the market as a whole. The Washington-based Software Publishers club cautions that the figures should not be considered estimates of market size, since the sample only includes the sales of the major North American software firms in each market, but it reckons that in general, in European markets, North American personal computer software sales are about 70% of the total market in each country. In Europe, the Software Publishers Association runs its affairs from an office in Paris.
