Although the true market share of security applications often remains hidden, software vendors will claim to dominate a market based on their sales numbers vs. the reported sales numbers of their competitors. However, as a unique alternative, we are able to present the following report based purely on the detection of the applications that tens of thousands of users actually have installed on their endpoints.
Antivirus Vendor Data
It is interesting to note that Microsoft, not typically associated with antivirus application success, has captured a significant share with their recent antivirus solutions. And that brand awareness, even with the significant amount Symantec and McAfee have does not necessarily translate into having the most installs.
Antivirus Product Data
The free products capture the top 4 spots. Also worth noting is that Kaspersky’s Internet Security product suite is more popular than its individual antivirus application. Kaspersky is unique in this regard. Symantec’s success is explained by the appearance of 5 different Symantec products on this graph: Norton AntiVirus, Norton Internet Security, Symantec AntiVirus, Symantec Endpoint Protection and Norton 360.
Antivirus Vendor Data by Continent
European vendors, which include: AVAST, Avira, AVG, ESET, Panda, BitDefender, G Data and Sophos total just over 50% of the market.Whereas US-based vendors, which include: Symantec, Microsoft, McAfee, PC Tools and Sunbelt make up just over 30%.
Conclusions
It is useful to see the sheer variety of vendors that are occupying a 1-6% antivirus application market share. Though, in the United States, Symantec and McAfee are often positioned as the top choices, the reality is that competition is alive and well in this highly-fragmented sector. Innovations in anti-malware products are therefore, likely partially a function of the increasing variety/intelligence of malware authors as well as a desire to stay afloat in a highly competitive marketplace.
European vendors, which include: AVAST, Avira, AVG, ESET, Panda, BitDefender, G Data and Sophos total just over 50% of the market. Whereas US-based vendors, which include: Symantec, Microsoft, McAfee, PC Tools (acquired by Symantec), Sunbelt and Comodo make up just over 30%.
Microsoft has established itself as a significant competitor in the security application space, making the WA-based giant a legitimate challenger to pure-play security players Symantec and McAfee.42% of the product market is controlled by free products, while vendors that primarily offer a free product have a 48% market share. It would appear that end users have as much faith in the ability of free antivirus applications to keep them secure as they do paid antivirus.
The Research
Out of the 50 million endpoints that employ the OESIS Framework, OPSWAT collected data from tens of thousands of volunteers. The information collected from OPSWAT’s various
tools had a high rate of correlation. That is to say, when comparing reports, despite these tools having different uses, percentages of antivirus product usage were consistent. This consistency would suggest our data has a high degree of reliability. |
