Security Advisor
Gartner: Security Software Market Experiences Strong Growth
McAfee was the big winner, as its revenue increased 37 percent year-over-year.
Research firm Gartner reported this week that the overall worldwide security software market grew 7.9 percent in 2012 and brought in $19.2 billion in revenue for the year.
The report, "Market Share Analysis: Security Software, Worldwide, 2012," found that McAfee experienced the most growth year-over-year, and closed the gap between itself and first-place Symantec.
"The 2012 security market saw a continuation of increasing demand for consumer and enterprise security tools as McAfee's high growth of 37 percent boosted the overall market's growth rebound in 2012," said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner and co-author of the report.
According to Gartner, the massive McAfee jump in market share is thanks to the 2011 acquisition of the security firm by Intel and strong internal growth.
McAfee's large growth also came at the expense of market-leading Symantec, which only accumulated a more-modest growth of 2.6 percent to finish the year with $3.75 billion in revenue. While third-place firm Trend Micro also stepped up its internal growth, specifically in its virtualization and cloud product offerings, it did not pay off for the company like it did McAfee -- Trend Micro saw a decrease of 2.7 percent in 2012.
Microsoft did crack the top-10 list for the year, finishing at the bottom of the list after its security software business experienced a growth of 2 percent over the previous year.
Speaking more generally on the overall market growth, Gartner believes the strong gains in 2012 could be directly correlated with the growth in SaaS and virtualization adoption. "Security buyers from SMBs are increasingly considering security as a service as an alternative for deploying security technologies, particularly for areas such as email and Web security, which is leading to more market consolidation and more competitive pricing as established players acquire pure-play cloud-based specialists across the security landscape," said Contu.
While things are looking up for the worldwide security software market, Gartner did say there remains a large trouble area: Regionally, Western Europe's security software spending was down in 2012 due to the area's economic uncertainties and due to the dollar-to-Euro conversion impact.
However, it seems that this was the only trouble spot on the map. North America increased its spending by 8.2 percent, Eastern Europe had a jump in spending of 14.4 percent, Latin America clocked in with a 12.6 percent growth and Euroasia increased its spending by 21.8 percent.
Gartner said it expects for the security software market to continue to grow in 2013 and will provide specific details on its five-year forecast during its Gartner's 2013 Security and Risk Management Summits, with the first one taking place in National Harbor, MD from June 10 to 13.