Oracle, citing public IT industry earnings reports, on Oct. 17 declared itself to be the second-largest software company in the world behind Microsoft.
"Given IBM's recently announced quarterly results, we would like to take this opportunity to point out that Oracle's software business has been growing faster than IBM's software business, and now Oracle has moved up to become the number 2 software company in the world while IBM has slipped to number 3," Oracle said in an email advisory to the media.
"Over IBM's last four quarters, they reported software revenue totaling $25.7 billion, while during Oracle's last four quarters, we reported software revenue totaling $27.8 billion," Oracle said.
Microsoft earned $61 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30 for its various enterprise and consumer software products.
Further reading
The Forbes Global 2000, an annual ranking of the top 2000 public companies in the world by Forbes magazine, is based on a mix of four metrics: sales, profit, assets and market value. The top 10 companies on the 2013 list for Forbes' Software & Programming industry listing are ranked here:
1. Microsoft, United States
2. Oracle, United States
3. IBM, United States
4. SAP, Germany
5. Symantec, United States
6. VMware, United States
7. CA Technologies, United States
8. Adobe Systems, United States
9. Fiserv, United States
10. Amadeus IT Group, Spain
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