Worldwide security software revenue totalled $19.2bn in 2012, a 7.9 per cent increase from 2011 revenue of $17.7bn, according to Gartner Incorporated. Gartner said that the evolution of new threats and working practices, such as Bring Your Own Device, was driving spending on security.
“The 2012 security market saw a continuation of increasing demand for consumer and enterprise security tools as McAfee’s high growth of 37 per cent boosted the overall market’s growth rebound in 2012,”research director at Gartner, Mr. Ruggero Contu, was quoted as saying in a statement on Friday.
“Although overall, the 2012 security market continued to grow, not all regions experienced the high double-digit growth of, for example, Eurasia, which was driven by greenfield projects and buoyant economies. As expected, Western Europe remained the laggard due to economic uncertainties and fragility and also due to the impact of dollar-to-euro conversion,” he added.
While it retained its number one position in the consumer and enterprise security spaces in 2012, Symantec managed only single-digit growth of 2.6 per cent to reach $3.75bn in 2012.
Second-placed McAfee showed significant growth of 37 per cent in 2012 to reach $1.7bn. This was driven by a combination of organic growth, acquisitions and the indirect impact of a 2011 revenue write-down following Intel’s acquisition of McAfee.
In third place, Trend Micro, which spent much of 2012 accelerating the diversification of its business with cloud and virtualization platform security and advanced threat protection offerings, recorded an overall security revenue decrease of 2.7 per cent, with negative growth impacting its consumer and enterprise businesses.
“Security continues to be a top priority across all technology categories in the SMB market. The rise of midmarket demand presents a new challenge for participants in the security space, as SMB requirements are different from those of larger enterprises,” Contu said.
He added, “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.”
Spending on security software is also influenced by the evolution of new threats and working practices.