OPSWAT Issues Groundbreaking Report on Worldwide Antivirus Application Market Share

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) July 7, 2010 -- OPSWAT, Inc., the leading provider of integration technologies to software developers and vendors whose products are deployed in over 50 million endpoints, recently completed the first in a series of reports. This first release concerns the deployments of antivirus applications.

Drawing on the power of two of the company’s diagnostic utilities that incorporate the OESIS® Framework">OESIS Framework, OPSWAT analyzed data from tens of thousands of users who volunteered to report information. Any security software vendors looking for inclusion in the framework are free to partner with OPSWAT via the OESIS OK Certification Program, which offers interoperability certification for 14 different security product categories ranging from antivirus to VPN clients.

As the list below shows, four of the top five most popular vendors offer free products to consumers.

The top 10 Windows antivirus applications by vendor for January to May 2010

• AVAST Software 19.14%
• Avira GmbH 11.39%
• Symantec Corp. 10.06%
• Microsoft Corp. 9.29%
• AVG Technologies 9%
• McAfee, Inc. 7.3%
• Kaspersky Lab 5.96%
• ESET Software 5.66%
• Panda Software 3.44%
• Trend Micro, Inc. 2.8%

The top 10 Windows antivirus applications by product for January to May 2010

• avast! Free Antivirus 11.45%
• Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 9.19%
• AVG Antivirus Free 8.6%
• Microsoft Security Essentials 7.48%
• avast! Antivirus5.4%
• Kaspersky Internet Security 4.48%
• Norton AntiVirus 4.24%
• ESET NOD32 Antivirus 3.84%
• avast! Antivirus Professional 3.5%
• McAfee VirusScan 3.26%

Interesting findings:

• 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, 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.

OPSWAT will be releasing more reports on the market share for endpoint security products such as hard disk encryption, personal firewalls, backup clients and device access control applications in the future. Application vendors looking to add their applications to the OESIS Framework are free to partner with OPSWAT through the OESIS OK certification Program.

About OPSWAT
Founded in 2002, OPSWAT provides software engineers and IT pros with development tools and data services to power manageability and security solutions. OPSWAT, Inc. created OESIS OK, an industry-wide certification program that verifies the interoperability of endpoint security applications with products from market-leading technology vendors. The free Am I OESIS OK? utility hosted at oesisok.com enables end users to assess the interoperability and quality level of their applications