How do you decide which statistical software to use? Sure you think about which one you handle best or which is most suitable for the analysis aim. But it can also be helpful to consider the size of the software’s market share and whether it is growing or shrinking. It is important to check whether your software skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what package should be adopted when starting to build a new system. Ranking though is not an easy task, Robert A. Muenchen presents various ways of measuring the popularity or market share of BMDP, JMP, Minitab, R, R-PLUS, Revolution R, S-PLUS, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Statistica, and Systat. He researches different indicators such as internet discussion, internet search, surveys of use, impact on scholarly activity, growth in capability and job market.
Conclusion
The open source tools grow in popularity, especially R challenges commercial packages. Although SAS and SPSS are prevalent in the business community and STATA is the first choice in educational area. Overall each software is the most widely used in one market or another.
Examples:
Internet Discussion
Job Market
Scholarly Activity
Data Mining World 