According to The NPD Group, US retail sales of non-games software totaled $2.9 bln in 2006, a 2% decline over the $3 bln generated in 2005. While the most significant increases were seen in business and system utilities software, which posted respective dollar sales increases of 10% and 3% over 2005, the most significant losses were in operating system and finance software, which experienced respective dollar declines of 30% and 8% over the same time period. Strong sales of security suite software, which experienced 19% growth in dollar sales in 2006, helped make the system utilities category the second-best performing category in 2006.
| Top-selling software products in 2006 | |||
| Software product | Manufacturer | Release | Price |
| MS Office 2003 Student/Teacher Ed | Microsoft | Oct 2003 | $136.91 |
| TurboTax 2005 Deluxe With State | Intuit | Nov 2005 | $38.41 |
| Norton Internet Security 2006 | Symantec | Sep 2005 | $65.39 |
| Quickbooks 2006 Pro | Intuit | Nov 2005 | $171.22 |
| MS Office 2004 Student/Teacher Ed | Microsoft | Mar 2004 | $147.73 |
| Norton Antivirus 2006 | Symantec | Sept 2005 | $34.89 |
| Spy Sweeper | Webroot | Apr 2003 | $16.90 |
| TurboTax 2005 Premier With State | Intuit | Nov 2005 | $67.59 |
| MS Windows XP Home Ed. Upgrade | Microsoft | Oct 2001 | $93.34 |
| Norton Internet Security 2006, System Works 2006 Upgr Bundle |
Symantec | Nov 2005 | $59.21 |
| Source: NPD Group | |||