UK industry off to a flyer in 2009

The UK software market has kicked off 2009 by thrashing last year’s January performance – and overtaking Japan to become the second biggest territory in the world.

GfK-ChartTrack revealed this week that the UK software market grew by 26 per cent in 2008 – leaving it ahead of Japan in terms of unit sales in the year.

And UK GfK-ChartTrack director Dorian Bloch has predicted that the UK can move ahead of Japan in terms of revenue this year – as recently predicted by MCV.

For the first five weeks of this year, the UK console market grew year-on-year by 37 per cent in units and by 21 per cent in terms of revenues.

I haven’t got a crystal ball, but it’s very much a possibility that the UK will overtake Japan in terms of annual software revenue,” Bloch told MCV.

Japan is certainly in decline at the moment, mainly down to the fact that everyone seems to have already bought a DS or PSP, so hardware sales aren’t driving software sales – although DSi is flying off the shelves. The very sudden decline of PS2 is also a factor. The Japanese market is about twice the size of ours, so there is room for manoeuvre in terms of people who had a DS four years ago and want a new handheld.”

Bloch said the UK’s blistering start to the year could be attributed to the cheap sales at stores such as Zavvi.

He added: We need to wait until the middle of the year and have a firm date for DSi’s launch. Then we’ll really know what sort of year we’ll have.”