PC Software Piracy In RP Remains At 69%

The software piracy rate or installations of unlicensed software in personal computers (PCs) in the Philippines remained unchanged at sixty-nine (69%) percent from 2007 to 2009 and losses caused by software piracy increased from $202 million in 2008 to $217 million in 2009. In the Asia-Pacific region, the PC software piracy rate fell from 61 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009 but the dollar losses from illegal software rose to over $16.5 billion.These are among the findings of the Seventh Annual Global Software Piracy Study by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an international association representing the global software industry, in partnership with market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC).

The IDC study found that while the Asia-Pacific remains the region with the highest dollar losses from use of unlicensed software, anti-piracy education and enforcement campaigns spearheaded in recent years by the software industry, national and local governments, and law enforcement agencies have made commendable progress in bringing down piracy rates. Speaking on behalf of the local software industry, Atty. Bien Marquez III, BSA Consultant for the Philippines, said that the results of the study makes it clear that there is still much to be done to bring the software piracy rate down further in the country.

Additional key findings from the study include:

• Global PC software piracy dropped in 54 of the 111 countries studied. However, the worldwide piracy rate rose from 41 percent in 2008 to 43 percent in 2009 due to exponential growth in PC software deployments in emerging economies.
• The United States, Japan, and Luxembourg continue to hold the lowest piracy rates among the economies surveyed (20, 21, and 21 percent, respectively).
• In the Asia-Pacific, economies with the highest piracy rates include Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan.

The 2009 BSA/IDC Global PC Software Piracy Study covers piracy of all software that runs on PCs, including desktops, laptops, and ultra-portables, including netbooks. This includes operating systems, systems software, such as databases and security packages, and applications software, with legitimate free software and open source software covered by the scope of the study. IDC used proprietary statistics for software and hardware shipments and enlisted IDC analysts in more than 60 countries to review local market conditions and estimate the rate of PC software piracy around the world.