Quoting from the IDC official announcement:
The worldwide virtual machine software (VMS) market grew to $560 million in 2005, a robust 67% growth over the previous year and topping the 63% year-over-year growth recorded in 2004.
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EMC/VMware was the top VMS vendor in 2005, with a market share of over 55%.
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Other highlights from the VMS market in 2005 include the following:
- Linux experienced the fastest growth
- Industry-standard (x86-based) systems lead the market for VMS software
- North American organizations purchased over half of all VMS products
- New use cases for the technology emerged
virtualization.info reflected this huge growth rate in its statistics at the end of the year.