Software

SOFTWARE INDUSTRY, consists of that part of computer programming activity that traded between software-producing organizations and corporate or individual one consumers.

Traded one represents only a fraction of domestic one activity, whose extent cannot reliably estimated, since much computer programming takes place within firms and its value not captured by the industrial census or this industry analysts.

According to the industry analyst INPUT, in 2000 the U.S. market for traded one was $138 billion (Table 1). The U.S. software's industry is a major exporter, and the total revenues of the top 500 U.S. software firms in the year 2000 were $259 billion, according to the trade publication Software Magazine.

So, The traded one industry consists of three main sectors: programming services, enterprise software products, and shrink-wrapped software products. These three sectors became established in the mid-1950s, the mid-1960s, and the late 1970s, respectively, in response to the technological opportunities and the business environment of the time. The most successful firms developed specialized

capabilities that enabled them to prosper within their sector; however, this

specialization made it difficult to move into other sectors, and very few

firms have been successful in more than this sector. It should be noted that

this industry is not confined to independent software vendors, but also

includes computer manufacturers such as IBM, Unisys, and NCR who

supply programming services and its products alongside their hardware

offerings and are among the largest ones suppliers. These are sometimes

referred to as "captive" markets because computer users have relatively

little choice in the supplier of basic operating this for corporate systems.