In commercial markets, software sales for educational products were
up more than 36% in March. Let's hope district schools' buying habits
are keeping pace:
Software Sales Boom In March
(04/30/98; 10:15 a.m. ET)
By Roger C. Lanctot, Computer Retail Week
A broad-based burst of retail software sales in March saw unit sales increase by 31.1 percent and revenue by 22.6 percent compared with March 1997, according to the latest monthly sales report from PC Data.
The increase was unusual and attributed to a number of factors including new titles, such as Cendant's StarCraft, rebates, and ongoing sales of low-cost systems. "There were a lot of low-cost products on the market that dovetailed nicely with low-cost PCs," said Ann Stephens, president of PC Data, in Reston, Va.
The biggest sales gains came in educational, financial, and game software, which saw unit sales gains of 36.1 percent, 38.6 percent, and 39.5 percent, respectively. Revenue was up more than 30 percent for educational and financial software categories, while game and personal-productivity software sales revenue increased more than 20 percent each for the month, compared with March 1997. Cendant Software, Intuit, The Learning Company, Symantec, and Electronic Arts benefited most from the sales increase. Cendant moved into the lead position in the educational software category, with a 10 percent increase in its share of unit sales in the category. Cendant finished March with one-third of unit and dollar sales.
The company's success was fueled by its aggressive trade-in, mail-in rebate program that reduced the resulting retail prices of some products to zero.
Torrance, Calif.-based Cendant maintained its edge in the game software category as well, with about 17 percent of unit and dollar sales for March, thanks in part to the success of StarCraft, which was the third best-selling game title in the month.
The Learning Company, in Cambridge, Mass., boosted its sales by 5 percent in both units and dollars with a similar trade-in mail-in rebate strategy, but the company fell behind Cendant in educational software sales, with 28.4 percent of unit and 32 percent of dollar sales at retail.
Symantec's unit sales volume rose by 55 percent and its retail revenue by 32.4 percent, with aggressive rebate programs on its Norton-brand product line. Although Microsoft had much smaller sales gains in March compared with Symantec, the Redmond, Wash., software giant finished the month on top, and Symantec took the runner-up spot in the category.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Intuit reported a 40.8 percent increase in unit and a 32.7 percent increase in dollar sales of its financial software. Block Financial kept pace with Intuit's growth, but ended the month in second place -- with less than 20 percent of unit sales and less than 10 percent of retail financial software revenue.
Electronic Arts nearly doubled its game software sales with a 94.5 percent increase in unit sales and added 50.1 percent to its retail software revenue. Despite these sales gains, the San Mateo, Calif.-based company lost market share to GT Interactive and Cendant. GT, based in New York, doubled its share of unit sales with an 84.3 percent increase in unit volume. The company saw a smaller, 40.9 percent increase in revenue.
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