OPSWAT, Inc. a provider of integration technologies to software developers and vendors recently released a report on the use of antivirus applications. According to the report, free products control 42% of the product market, and vendors that primarily offer a free product have a 48% market share.
The top 10 Windows antivirus applications for January to May 2010 according to OPSWAT were:
- avast! Free Antivirus 11.45%
- Avira AntiVir Personal – Free Antivirus 9.19%
- AVG AntiVirus Free 8.6%
- Microsoft Security Essentials 7.48%
- avast! Antivirus 5.4%
- Kaspersky Internet Security 4.48%
- Norton AntiVirus 4.24%
- ESET NOD32 Antivirus 3.84%
- avast! Antivirus Professional 3.5%
- McAfee VirusScan 3.26%
This data indicates that free products account for 42% of the market. From a vendor perspective, European vendors, total just over 50% of the market which include:
- AVAST,
- Avira,
- AVG,
- ESET,
- Panda,
- BitDefender,
- G Data and
- Sophos.
Whereas US-based vendors, make up just over 30% include:
Vendors that primarily offer a free product have a 48% market share.
The top 10 Windows antivirus vendors by market share for January to May 2010 according to OPSWAT were:
- AVAST Software 19.14%
- Avira GmbH 11.39%
- Symantec Corp. 10.06%
- Microsoft Corp. 9.29%
- AVG Technologies 9%
- McAfee, Inc. 7.3%
- Kaspersky Labs 5.96%
- ESET Software 5.66%
- Panda Software 3.44%
- Trend Micro, Inc. 2.8%
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According to the firm’s website, OPSWAT collected information from tens of thousands of volunteers out of the 50 million endpoints that use the OESIS Framework and the free Am I OESIS OK? online utility with which end users can check the interoperability and quality level of their applications. I have said this before, with other fun factoids like this, the adoption rate of the vendor’s tools may skew the results. Nonetheless, it is notable that
- Microsoft, not usually seen as a security vendor has captured a significant share with their recent anti-virus solutions and could be a legitimate challenger to pure-play security players Symantec and McAfee.
- Symantec and McAfee who are often seen as the top choices in the U.S. do not do well in this list. This data seems to show that AV competition is alive and well in the highly fragmented consumer sector.
- The fragmented marketplace may help keep innovation active in the AV market, which is a good thing in the face of the increasing variety of threats from malware.
So despite the claims of this or that vendor to dominate a market based on sales numbers, the OPSWAT data seems to show that end-users have developed a degree of trust in free antivirus applications to keep them secure as they do with paid antivirus.
Related articles
- Microsoft Remains the Leading Anti-Virus Vendor, Research Shows (news.softpedia.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.