Research firm IDC has revised year-over-year growth in the worldwide software market for 2013 to 4.3% in current U.S. dollars. The forecast was lowered from the 5.7% year-over-year growth projected in May because of an important currency exchange rate depreciation in the Japanese yen announced during the second quarter.
 
In constant U.S. dollars, the expected growth rate for 2013 remains very close to the forecast of 5.9%. Despite the fluctuation in currency exchange rates, IDC believes that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2012-2017 forecast period will remain close to 6%.
 
Collaborative Applications along with Structured Data Management Software and Data Access, Analysis and Delivery solutions are expected to show the strongest growth over the five-year forecast period with over 8% CAGR from 2012-2017. "Leveraging the social dimensions of the Internet keeps fueling the collaboration growth, much of which is in the form of software as a service. This is complementary to the increased attention to Big Data & Analytics solutions, which help enterprises to understand and act on anticipated customer behavior and provide new insights into product reliability and maintenance," said Henry Morris, Senior Vice President for Worldwide Software, Services, and Executive Advisory Research.
 
On a second tier, Enterprise Applications such as CRM, ERM, SCM, and Operations and Manufacturing Applications show CAGR rates around 6%. "Enterprises are starting to implement applications that either didn't exist or weren't needed in the past, such as commerce applications in all industries, not just retail, but also manufacturing, hospitality, food and beverage, and even the public sector. IDC is also seeing applications in categories that didn't exist in the past (e.g., subscription billing, spend optimization, and revenue management) for requirements that may have been met using custom applications or manual processes," said Christine Dover, Research Director, Enterprise Applications and Digital Commerce.
 
On a regional basis, the emerging economies continue to experience stronger growth than the mature economies. The average 2012-2017 CAGR for Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), Latin America, and Central Eastern, Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) is 8.2% while the average CAGR for the mature regions – North America, Western Europe, and Japan – is 5.4%.