According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department is looking into the possibility that the Blackboard/WebCT merger might violate antitrust laws. Given that the combined company would own 80-90% of the LMS market, it’s no real surprise. This will be interesting to watch.
(Found via Online Learning Update.)
Blackboard and WebCT may have 80 to 90% of the LMS market in higher education, but less than 16% of the LMS market according to a 2003 Bersin & Associates report. Market share is typically based on revenue so it omits open source. If you count installations, Moodle is greater than the WebCT and Blackboard combination. Moodle is growing about 1000% faster than Blackboard (no decimal error, that is about 10 times as fast), but Moodle installations tend to serve many less students. If market share is defined in terms of students served, then Blackboard continues to outpace Moodle. This may change with new large users such as Open University UK.
The key point to remember is higher education is still less than one-fifth of the market for postsecondary education and training.
Good point, Jim. Nevertheless, I suspect that Blackboard and WebCT only need to have a high market share in the US higher ed in order to trigger antitrust concerns. They really do have a headlock on US colleges and that really does tend to stifle competition and innovation.