China's software and IT service market reached 37.059 billion yuan in the third quarter with a year-on-year rise of 18.4 percent, said a report released by the China Center of Information Industry Development (CCID).

The sale of software rose 19.1 percent in the period to 15 billion yuan and the IT service market was 22.059 billion yuan, up 18 percent year-on-year, the report said.

The sales of platform software were 3.614 billion yuan with a year-on-year rise of 10.6 percent. As the focus of the government and the industry, LINUX reported sales of 29.486 million yuan witha rise of 33.1 percent year-on-year.

However, its market share in the whole non-embedded operation system market is merely 2.3 percent in the face of hard competition against Windows and UNIX, the report said.

The report also shows that the network security products totaled 1.282 billion yuan in the third quarter, up 29.4 percent year-on-year.

In the period, the management software market reached 1.627 billion yuan, rising 22.1 percent year-on-year and the IT service market totaled 22.059 billion yuan with a year-on-year rise of 18 percent.

The online service market rose 18.2 percent to 8.269 billion yuan, accounting for 37.5 percent. Internet advertisement, online games, and search engines became the major driving force of the market, said the report.

(Xinhua News Agency November 8, 2005)