June 18, 2008

"Tough, but not worsening," says SAP's (SAPM) Co-Chief Executive about the current U.S. software market.

Well, perhaps he hasn't seen the results of ChangeWave's last survey of U.S. corporate software buyers. Not only did overall software spending take another hit, but one-in-four respondents said their company's 2nd Quarter capital budgets had been adjusted lower over the past 90 days.

At the company level, our survey showed SAP getting hammered in the U.S. in several of their software sweet spots - including Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Intelligence (BI) software.

Here's a look at SAP's current market share compared to that of our previous survey in January 2008:

Going forward, the SAP picture looks even uglier in terms of U.S. planned purchases for the next six months:

Customer relationship management - down five points
Enterprise resource planning - down nine points
Business intelligence - down three points

One potential bright spot - U.S. companies only account for about 30% of SAP's sales, which is less than their competitors who typically average more than 50%.

But any way you look at it, these survey results don't bode well for SAP.