A fresh report, released today by the BSA, details how 41% of all installed PC software worldwide was pirated in 2008, 3% more than in 2007.

The study, which included 110 countries, interestingly found that the piracy rate in over half (51.8%) of the countries actually dropped when compared to a year before. In fact – only 14.5% of the countries displayed an increase in the piracy rate. So where does the 3% jump occur? Simple – Computer shipments to High-piracy countries, specifically both China and India, grew faster than other countries involved in the study. This meant the reduction in piracy elsewhere was easily overpowered.

The study also found that losses jumped over $50 billion for the first time in history. I’m assuming that this is based on the assumption that every illegal copy would’ve been bought, which isn’t entirely realistic. 20 million illegal downloads doesn’t mean 20 million sales, as many users just simply wouldn’t have bought the software whether a cracked copy was available or not. Either way, it’s still an incredibly large loss in revenue each year.

Ironically, the US makes up the largest amount of revenue lost ($9.1 Billion), despite having the lowest piracy rate in the world (20%), thanks to having the largest PC software demand in the world. The study also found that despite the piracy rate hovering around 20%, losses have grown larger and larger with each year.

The full report by the BSA, and conducted by the IDC is available here.

[via DownloadSquad]