What is the plural form of "Software"?

Is it correct to use softwares, as in the following sentence?

There are various video conversion softwares in the market.

Solution 1:

For all I know, software is uncountable, so it's perfectly fine to say "there is various software". If you don't like how that sounds (I know many people who don't), you can always go with "there are various software packages", "there are various pieces of software" or something like that. An even simpler alternative would be "programs". Depending on the context of your sample sentence, even "video converters" might work, if it's already clear that you are talking about software.

Edit: I have checked Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary and The Free Dictionary, none of them mention softwares at all.

Solution 2:

Just a note to clear up any confusion: I believe the answer provided by RegDwight is correct; but I also want to point out that because the word "software" is uncountable, there is no such thing as a "plural form."

What I mean is this: don't misinterpret the accepted answer to imply that the following sentence is correct:

The company Microsoft produces many software.

The above is problematic for the same reason that the following sentence is problematic:

My bottle is full of many water.

So again: to answer your question directly, there is no plural form. Software is like water; you can have "a lot" of it, but you can't have "many" (or "dozens", or "hundreds", etc.) of it. You can, however, as the other answers have already indicated, have "many pieces of it" (just like you can have "many bottles of water").

Solution 3:

I avoid that by saying "software products".

Solution 4:

I would use programs instead:

There are various video conversion programs in the market.

Software, in my opinion, is better used as the general concept (as opposed to hardware, say). All of the programs on my PC are software. My hardware consists of a CPU, memory, fans, screen, etc.

Oh, and also I can't resist to refer to the recently common half-joke codes (as in "plz show me the codes" so frequent in certain programming forums).