RDBMS Market Share

Three vendors, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, control over 80% of the relational database market today, and the same three have led the industry for at least the past decade.



The above chart is based on press releases from or quoting Gartner Group/Dataquest. For specific references see the backup spreadsheet. Note that up until 2004, Gartner/Dataquest only included new license fees in its market data, then began including subscription and renewal fees in 2005. So the data for 2005-2006 is not strictly comparable with the data for previous years.

The shift in mix from 2004 to 2005 because of the reporting change also implies a difference in the major vendors' business models. The fact that Oracle "gains" share and IBM "loses" share when renewal and subscription revenues are added in implies that renewals and subscriptions are a more important part of Oracle's business than of IBM's. (Or, perhaps, that Oracle is consistently willing to lowball IBM on up-front fees in order to make the sale!)