Re: database market share 2003

If I were an Informix customer who just could not live without Informix, it would be most interesting to know what the future holds for those customers. Last I heard Informix only had 3% of the market, similar to many other niche database markets. It may be a great database, but in the final analysis it is totally irrelevant when compared to what DB2, Oracle, and MS-SQL are doing. If your statement is true, 140 million is indeed a lot of money, but compared with over 2 billion in revenue for DB2 it is not. It looks like side money. Is it really sensible for IBM to spend any kind of effort on a product that brings in little more than 5% of its database revenue? I would think staying with Informix and its certain death would get people interested in the future. Technically speaking, most of the white papers I've read point to DB2 as the clear winner in just about every single category and puzzling why anyone here would even consider Oracle or MS. The one area of relevance that Informix **does** bring to the table is that DB2 will be incorporating many Informix features. If I were an Informix customer I would consider that good news, but it doesn't look like that here, it looks like a bunch of sour grapes for Informix peoples. "rkusenet" <rkusenet@sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:2i8tl1FkdmbtU1@uni-berlin.de... > > "scottishpoet" <dryburghj@yahoo.com> wrote > > In the UNIX segment of the database market, Gartner said sales fell > > 5.9% to $2.34 billion last year as most of the leading vendors > > declined. Oracle's new license sales fell 8.3% to $1.34 billion, or > > 57.4% share; while IBM's sales fell 5.8% to $586.5 million, or 25.1% > > share. > > Informix's total new license sales in 2003 was 140 million. > Even assuming that all of those 140 million is on Unix, > it means sales of Db2 on unix has overtaken Informix. > Interesting. Only last year or so I read that Informix was > still outselling Db2 in Unix despite step child treatment > by IBM. > > > >