A study performed by IDC and commissioned by Microsoft has claimed that 33% of all software is counterfeit, revealing a number of other interesting statistics on the way to its conclusion. IDC surveyed 1,104 consumers, 973 business users and 268 CIO/IT managers across 10 countries to highlight how prevalent piracy and software counterfeiting is in the market today.
According to the study, the "direct costs to enterprises" related to dealing with counterfeit software and malware "will hit $114 billion this year", while "consumers worldwide will waste 1.5 billion hours this year" dealing with these problems. A large portion of pirated software apparently comes pre-installed on bought computers, with 78% of all pirated software coming with spyware. Also, 45% of the respondents claimed that pirated software caused their PC to slow down enough to warrant an uninstall.
IDC: 33 percent of all software is pirated
Posted on Tuesday, March 26 2013 @ 12:41 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck