How Salesforce Continued to Expand Its CRM Market Share

Previously in the series, we discussed that apart from posting record fiscal 3Q16 results, Salesforce (CRM) raised its revenue guidance for the fourth time. If we look at the company’s guidance for full-year fiscal 2016 revenues, the company is expected to grow at 20%-22% over fiscal 2015 results. The company expects to generate $8 billion in revenues in fiscal 2017. The company claims it is ”well on the path to reach $10 billion faster than any other enterprise software company.”

According to Gartner and as the above pie chart shows, Salesforce was the largest customer relationship management (or CRM) vendor in 2014 with $4.3 billion in revenues and 18.4% market share. It was followed by SAP (SAP) and Oracle (ORCL), which held 12.1% and 9.1% in market share, respectively. Microsoft (MSFT) and IBM (IBM), which hold 6.2% and 3.8% of the market share, respectively, are also among the top five players. The Gartner report further stated that the top ten CRM vendors commanded more than 60% of the market share in 2014.

Among all five players, Salesforce was the only player who managed to increase its market share, as the presentation above shows. It appears that Salesforce is gaining market share at the expense of SAP and Oracle. These companies’ market shares fell to 12.1% and 9.1%, respectively, in 2014 as compared to 12.8% and 10.1%, respectively.

You can consider investing in the iShares US Technology ETF (IYW) to gain exposure to Salesforce. IYW invests ~1.4% of its holdings in Salesforce.