IDC (www.idc.com) has released the latest forecast from the Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker. For 2012, the worldwide software market grew 3.6% year over year, less than half the growth rate experienced in 2010 and 2011.

The research group believes these results mark the beginning of a more conservative period of growth. The forecast growth rate for 2013 is 5.7% while the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2012-2017 forecast period is 6.3%.

The collaborative applications software category is forecast to have the highest growth in the short term (2013). This category includes social software, which is growing from a lower revenue base. The collaborative applications category is also experiencing more cloud deployments than other categories and this represents new software investments.

The structured data management software category is expected to show the strongest growth over the five-year forecast period with a 9.3% CAGR from 2012-2017, fueled by faster growth in the last 2-3 years of the forecast. Data management is at the core of the information-driven economy and will play a critical role in the implementation of Big Data and analytics.

On a regional basis, the emerging economies will experience stronger growth than in mature economies. The average 2012-2017 CAGR for Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), Latin America, and Central Eastern, Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) is 8.8% while the average CAGR for the mature regions – North America, Western Europe, and Japan – is 5.0%. The emerging regions have been gaining almost 0.7% of market share every year since 2008 and they are expected to represent almost 19% of global software revenues in 2017.

IDC's Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker provides total market size and vendor share for the eighty-two segments of the global software market. The Tracker covers more than 800 software vendors across a total of 49 countries markets. Historical market size, vendor share, and forecasts are updated on a semiannual basis.