The US Software Publishers Association reports that North American software sales for fourth quarter of 1990 climbed to an estimated $1,300m measured at retail, an increase of 22% over fourth quarter 1989 – but international sales of US software firms soared 70% over the same period, which being aggregated translates to an overall growth rate of 36%. For the whole year, the Association, drawing on an analysis of monthly sales information submitted to the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen & Co by 150 leading software publishers, estimates that the North American personal computer applications software market was up 26.2% to $4,600m. Within the figures, for the fourth quarter, sales of MS-DOS applications rose 18.1%, Macintosh sales were up 12.5% and Windows applications sales increased a storming 198%. Within classes, desktop publishing sales grew 68.2% and database sales rose 65.8%. MS-DOS education and fun-and-games software sales rose 33.3% and 30.0% respectively, but word processors remain the largest segment at $248m. Software industry employment rose 21.7% in 1990, and productivity per employee also increased at a healty rate, the Association says. Windows applications represented nearly 10% of domestic and more than 13% of worldwide sales in fourth quarter to become the second largest computer format after MS-DOS.
