Well these two reports will help us narrow down our estimates of the future LMS market size [emphasis added].
According to a new market research report, “Learning Management System Market by Application, Delivery Mode (Distance Learning and Instructor-Led Training), Deployment (On-Premises and Cloud), User Type (Academic and Corporate), Vertical, and Region – Global Forecast to 2021”, published by MarketsandMarkets, the LMS market size is expected to grow from USD 5.22 Billion in 2016 to USD 15.72 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 24.7%.
The growth rate for Self-paced eLearning platforms is distinctly negative at -14.6% and the global platform market is in freefall. Revenues for platform will plummet by $3.8 billion over the forecast period. Essentially, the global LMS market is imploding. [snip]
The worldwide growth rate for LMS products is very negative at -14.6% and revenues will plunge to $3.2 billion by 2021, down from $7.1 billion in 2016.
I’ll give this to them – I’m willing to bet that the five-year reality will lie somewhere between those two forecasts.
Of course both market analyses make a fundamental flaw in combining all things labeled LMS as a single market. As Michael pointed out in his comment to my earlier post on the MarketsandMarkets report:
Lumping higher ed, K12, and corporate LMSs into the same category is a little bit like lumping railroad cars together with automobiles because they are both called cars, have wheels, and carry things and/or people from one place to another. On top of that, nobody has decent data on the size of the global market, never mind the growth of it. MarketsandMarkets’ “analysis” effectively gives us made-up numbers about a mythical automobile/train car market.
