Stephen Downes

The answer is, of course, pretty big. But Joshua Kim points to some apparent discrepencies in the research.  He writes, "Instructure (Canvas) has about a 20 percent market share. In 2016, Instructure's revenues were about $111 million." That gives us a total market of about %550 million. "What explains the discrepancy of this LMS market size estimate (between $555 and $832 million), and those from the market research companies and the press of between $3.2 and $5.2 billion?" Two things. First, Instructure's 20% market share is for the U.S. only. Instructure has a much lower share outside the U.S. And second, it's for higher education only. There's a much larger LMS market in corporate learning, which Instructure has barely touched. Is it possible that the U.S. higher education sector is only about 15% of the global market? Well, yeah. The numbers Kim points to as inconsistent are actually pretty consistent. Having said that, the real questuon mark isn't current size. It's growth.