Worldwide RDBMS revenue drops

The worldwide RDBMS market declined by seven percent in 2002, dropping to $6.6 billion in license revenues when it had been $7.1 billion the year before, according to a Gartner statement released on Wednesday.

Gartner cites reduced IT spending as a reason for the drop, although the company noted that many organizations still are actively utilizing and furthering development of major RDBMS-based applications. 

In terms of dollars, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft continue to hold the most market share, with IBM jumping from 33.9 percent in 2001 to 36.2 percent in 2002.

Oracle's share during these two years declined, from 39.7 percent in 2001 to 33.9 percent in 2002. Microsoft increased its share from 14.3 percent to 18 percent during that time period.

Revenues were down for both IBM and Oracle. Oracle's revenues dropped precipitously, by 20.5 percent, from $2.83 billion in 2001 to $2.24 billion in 2002. Oracle, however, maintained its lead on the Windows server and Unix platforms, with 43 percent of that market.

IBM's revenues dropped 0.8 percent, from $2.41 billion in 2001 to $2.40 billion last year. IBM had strong growth on DB2 for zSeries mainframe hardware, which compensated for a double-digit decline on DB2 for the iSeries, formerly known as the AS/400, keeping IBM's new license revenue flat in 2002, according to Gartner

Microsoft database revenues increased 16.8 percent, from $1.02 billion in 2001 to $1.19 billion in 2002.