Data

Demand for Education Software, Digital Products Is Growing

By Sean Cavanagh — January 17, 2013 1 min read
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The market for educational software and digital products in schools, driven partly by demands in testing and assessment, grew over the most recent year and now stands at $7.7 billion, a new analysis reveals.

The overall estimated market increased by 3.5 percent from 2009-10 to 2010-11, according to new research from the Software & Information Industry Association.

The view of the market is based on a survey of 581 educational companies selling in the prekindergarten through grade 12 market. Responses came from 105 companies, who reported $2.04 billion in revenues, from which the SIIA extrapolated the size of the overall market, based on those results.

Where did those companies do the most business? The most fertile area was instructional support, which made up the largest share of the market, 38 percent of it, at $892 million. Within that category, testing and assessment was the largest area of business, followed by professional development, according to the SIIA, a major trade association for the software and digital content industry.

Instructional content made up the next-largest share of revenues, at 36 percent, or $795 million, followed by platforms and administration, at 26 percent, or $353 million.

The research on the state of the industry was undertaken for the SIIA by John Richards, the president of Consulting Services for Education, a company that provides market research and analysis, among other services. His analysis was compiled in a report, the “2011 U.S. Education Technology Market: PreK-12,” which SIIA makes available at a cost. The association shared some of the overall findings, which can be found in the report’s executive summary, with Education Week.

You can read our complete account the associaton’s analysis of the evolving digital education market on the Marketplace K-12 blog.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Digital Education blog.