IBM Beats Oracle in 2002 Database Sales

IBM Corp. unseated Oracle Corp. as the top seller of relational database software last year, market researcher Gartner Inc. said.

IBM’s share of the $6.63-billion market rose to 36% in 2002 from 34% in 2001, Gartner said. Oracle’s portion slipped to 34% from 40%, and Microsoft Corp.’s share grew to 18% from 14%. The total market fell by 6.9%.