MERRICK - A few big winners sit astride a Darwinian software industry littered with money-losing companies.

That's the assessment of a Long Island consultant who conducted a five-year study of publicly traded software companies around the world.

Brian Turchin, president of Cape Horn Strategies Inc., said his study found a stunning reversal since the technology bubble burst: The software industry went from a $3 billion profit in 1999 to a net loss of $35.5 billion in 2001. Turchin excluded Microsoft from that figure to avoid the distorting effects of the Redmond, Wash., gargantuan, but included the company in other parts of the study.

Turchin surveyed 223 top publicly traded software companies - including Islandia-based Computer Associates International Inc. - from 1997 to the present as part of the research for a book in progress (working title: "How to Succeed in the Software Business: A new view of success strategies for both growth and profitability").

Only 14 companies, including Microsoft, SAP and Checkpoint Software, were able to grow revenue and remain profitable for five years in a row, the study found.

"The software business is about a few winners and a lot of losers," Turchin said. "When you win, you win big."

But, at the same time, he noted market conditions unlike any ever encountered tend to skew the results.

In 1999, for instance, 43 percent of software companies in his universe were profitable versus just 25 percent in 2001.

"When I was talking to a software CEO from White Plains, he was saying the software business is in a depression, forget about a recession."

Cape Horn, Turchin's company, is a metaphorical reference to the dangers businesses must negotiate. Cape Horn was the area in South America where many galleons ran aground in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Turchin said the study puts a quantitative face on what people were describing qualitatively, but that he is conducting further research in an effort to develop a model that describes traits of winners in the software world.

"What I'm trying to build is a business-strategy assessment," he said.