SAP on Thursday reported better-than-expected license sales for its first quarter ended March 31. The results were driven by a bigger share of the U.S. market, proving the German software maker is holding its own against staunch competitor Oracle.

Revenue in the United States for software, licensing, and maintenance rose 27% to 131 million euros, or $172 million, compared with 103 million euros, or $135 million in the year-ago quarter. Globally, sales for that sector of SAP's business grew 17% to 434 million euros, or $555 million, compared with 370 million euros, or $484.8 million in the year ago quarter at today's exchange rate of 1 euro to 1.3 U.S. dollars. Net income for the quarter reached 254 million euros ($331 million), or $1.07 per share, up from 229 million euros ($299 million), or 96 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Total revenue for the first quarter of 2005 rose 11% from the year-ago quarter to 1.7 billion euros, or $2.2 billion. SAP attributes the total-revenue results to its focus on building and maintaining a complete and integrated product line. Said SAP CEO Henning Kagermann in a statement, "Our strength in innovation is already delivering results with SAP NetWeaver and mySAP ERP, the first ERP solution enabled for a services-oriented architecture, and innovation will also help drive growth into the next decade with our Enterprise Services Architecture powered by SAP NetWeaver."