The survey estimates that around one-third of institutions have delayed purchasing and implementation decisions during the current market downturn. Providers of packaged solutions are likely to feel the squeeze most, says Kimsey, as spending by their traditional target markets (lower and middle tier institutions) appears to be tightening at a quicker pace than at the top-end of the market.

Kimsey foresees no upturn in demand until around 2004, by which time a number of smaller vendors are likely to disappear or be swallowed up by larger competitors.

The UK, with more than 31,000 trading positions on the sell-side, is Europe’s largest market for financial trading technology. The latest edition of the Kimsey survey quizzed respondents with direct responsibility for around 15,000 trading positions.

Reuters is the major provider of market information to UK dealing rooms, with approximately 40% market share, and just under 50% share of all information service budgets. The number two player is Bloomberg, with Moneyline/Telerate and Thomson Financial vying for third spot. Reuters achieves the highest overall customer satisfaction ratings. Although Reuters is the dominant provider of news wire services to the UK financial trading community, Dow Jones Newswires achieves the accolade of “Best Rated Service” from users.

Etrali, the dealer board/turret system vendor subsidiary of France Telecom (and the UK's number 3 player - behind Syntegra and IPC) achieved the highest overall customer satisfaction ratings in the dealer board area.

In hardware, Compaq has marginally higher share of the desktop market than Dell, and remains dominant in server provision.