Piracy cost software industry $50 billion, says BSA

Piracy cost software industry $50 billion, says BSA
According to a new annual study from the Business Software Alliance, losses related to software piracy amounted to $50 billion USD last year, an 11 percent increase from last year.

The study did note however that most of the increase was a result of the weakening U.S. dollar.



Notable members of the BSA are Microsoft, Dell, Intel and IBM.

For the United States, the number related to piracy was $9 billion USD, and the study concluded that piracy rates were among the lowest in the world, with a number around 20 percent. However, because the US dominates the software market, the losses where higher than any other one nation.

A few of the notable findings, from the report are:

* While emerging economies account for 45 percent of the global PC hardware market, they account for less than 20 percent of the PC software market. If the emerging economies’ PC software share were the same as it is for PC hardware, the software market would grow by $40 billion a year. Lowering global piracy by just one point a year would add $20 billion in stimulus to the IT industry.

* The lowest-piracy countries are the United States, Japan, New Zealand, and Luxembourg, all near 20 percent. The highest-piracy countries are Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia, and Zimbabwe, all over 90 percent.

* The highest-piracy regions are Central/Eastern Europe (67 percent) and Latin America (65 percent). The lowest regions are North America (21 percent) and the European Union (35 percent).


Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 12 May 2009 22:01
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  • 15 comments
  • Fiji5555

    Ermmmmm no they didn't LOSE any money, they just didn't have as much INCOME as expected. If people can't afford to spend lets say $200 on a software product then they NEVER will pay for it so they didn't lose a customer, the customer just decided to get it for free. The companies need to accept a certain amount of piracy and just deal with giving the public a better and less costly product.

    12.5.2009 22:10 #1

  • varnull

    like what is wasted invading other peoples countries and the "black budgets" which western governments run.. they spend this much in one week..

    will these whiners ever shut up.. one day we might all decide to stop buying anything.. then what will they do?

    what do you call a business without customers? .. oh yeah.. an empty factory XD



    Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work.
    I would rather you hate me for who I am than love me for what I am not.
    “It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” - Bruce Schneier

    12.5.2009 22:19 #2

  • ddp

    varnull, no, bankrupt.

    12.5.2009 22:35 #3

  • Hopium

    yet i am willing to bet every one of those software developers are posting growth in revenue, be it 3% or 30% they are all making more money this year then last

    12.5.2009 22:53 #4

  • llongtheD

    @ Hopium,
    I agree. They should show their earnings growth, and stock value along with these "numbers." But if they did that, they wouldn't have much leverage in getting the corrupt politicians on board to passing bogus laws.

    13.5.2009 00:05 #5

  • ZippyDSM

    More like 500K-5 million , because once you add real world "physics" and de spin the bloated hype you come out with a number that's infedecimal to the industry.

    13.5.2009 01:14 #6

  • mike.m

    Money, money, money. That's all it is to these greedy corporations. $50B is pennies for Microsoft, Intel, etc. They're never going to "end" piracy. They need to wake up and drop the prices for consumers, especially with the recession.

    To Microsoft, $60 for a game is too much, when Valve sells the same titles and more for half that. Just because most people can’t afford a high performance PC and buy your console, doesn’t mean you have to squeeze every penny out of them to play your games. We buy the game for $60, have to pay for game add-on's, pay another $60/year to play online not to mention the over $20/month for internet service, spend over $300 for a console, pay more for another controller and accessories that should've been included in the first place, like Sony, and Nintendo did. I can't wait till that On-Live hits the stores, then we might see "the other guys" drop their prices.

    For Intel, hardly any average consumer can still afford a core i7, or could find any affordable CPU's with close perfromance, or pay tons for a very low capacity SSD. Intel took out a couple of billions to bring 32-nm CPUs out this/next year, but no one is going to be surprised if they still cost a fortune.

    For Dell, they would think by now that no one is going to pay over $3k for a low performance laptop, with a reflective screen, just because it carries the name "adamo". And they still are charging over $700 to increase to an already old-technology 45-nm 2.8Ghz Core Duo, and even more for 8GB ram. Not to mention the way overpriced poor customer service that they offer and fixed prices.

    I think this economy needs more coroporations, even though they are all greedy. What I mean is that the more coroporations, the more competition, the lower the prices will drop, and then these coroporation may start to benefit consumers to beat the other guy. For example, with Blu-ray, there is no other hard-disc HD format. Prices for players have droped slightly, but they are still expensive as hell, as well as the discs.



    Edit: Spelling

    13.5.2009 01:44 #7

  • Blackjax

    Originally posted by ddp: varnull, no, bankrupt.or Chrysler.




    well....

    100% of 10% of the greedy companies think their being ripped off by 90% of 100% of the people who are pirating only 21% of the time all the while 100% of 75% who couldn't afford it anyway accounted for 0% of 100% of the money they woudln't have made after 100% of the 79% bought it at an over inflated price to account for a 45% of the 100% of the money that should have been made by 1% of the 100% of the population who slaved to make the product that 100% of the 21% that 79% of the people just took it because they could.

    Thank you, thank you please send donations. There is a 100% possibilty that there is a 25% chance I may run for an elected office if only .05% figured what the hell I just said.

    Blackjax

    13.5.2009 03:54 #8

  • MightyOne

    Another study might suggest that the industry is costing the consumers TRILLIONS of dollars with overpriced products. The industry should consider itself lucky they make the profits they do while most of us live pay to pay and have no savings or retirement $.

    Get Real. The industry expects to much. The industry is a LIAR.

    13.5.2009 11:45 #9

  • sssharp

    They really are not losing as much as the claim. Each application has a free alternative. We(the low money spenders) go for the free app first, we only pay if that free app sucks so bad money must be spent.

    13.5.2009 20:26 #10

  • KillerBug

    Originally posted by sssharp: They really are not losing as much as the claim. Each application has a free alternative. We(the low money spenders) go for the free app first, we only pay if that free app sucks so bad money must be spent.Yeah...I bet Microsoft Office would be a lot less popular without piracy. Even free-for-free I prefer openoffice.org

    13.5.2009 22:44 #11

  • ivymike

    This discussion makes me wonder why Afterdawn allows Google to place ads on it's page from the BSA.

    13.5.2009 23:24 #12

  • SouthImp

    Sorry, but what a complete load of bollocks. I have downloaded albums worth over £10K and bought the ones I like. I've paid next to nothing for pirate films, then bought the ones I would watch again.

    Piracy saves people paying hard earned money for crap and rewards those artists and developers who are worth rewarding.

    15.5.2009 09:08 #13

  • pmshah

    In reality these corporations should be thankful to these pirates. All these pirated software would not spend the money no matter what. If this option is not feasible they will certainly look for alternatives in the open source area since they Do need to do the work. If they find something that meets their requirement they will migrate sooner than later and M$Win will see earlier demise.

    16.5.2009 00:28 #14

  • Winddog

    Hi, no one has ever said any thing about how much revenu is lost because of people stealing software at the retail stores It probaly exceeds what is Pirated. They need to study that.

    17.5.2009 20:48 #15

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