SEATTLE: A hostile bid that Oracle Corp launched over the weekend to buy rival software maker PeopleSoft Inc for US$5.1bil could spark counter moves by bigger players hoping to carve out a larger piece of the market, analysts said.
At stake is the US$65bil market for business software, the applications that companies use to track their finances, inventory, production, sales, customers and employees. The highly fragmented market has long been considered ripe for consolidation, with excellent growth prospects for software serving mid- to smaller-sized businesses.