Gartner Says Worldwide Security Software Market Grew 7.9 Percent In 2012

PRESS RELEASE

STAMFORD, Conn., May 30, 2013 -- Worldwide security software revenue totaled $19.2 billion in 2012, a 7.9 percent increase from 2011 revenue of $17.7 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner said that the evolution of new threats and working practices, such as bring your own device (BYOD), is 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% boosted the overall market's growth rebound in 2012," said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner. "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."

While it retained its No. 1 position in the consumer and enterprise security spaces in 2012, Symantec managed only single-digit growth of 2.6 percent to reach $3.75 billion in 2012 (see Table 1). Second-placed McAfee showed significant growth of 37% in 2012 to reach $1.7 billion. 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 (ATP) offerings, recorded an overall security revenue decrease of 2.7 percent, 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," said Mr. Contu. "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. For example, as companies increase the mobility of their workforce, this situation raises new security concerns and requirements. Growing demand for remote access requires organizations to safeguard off-premises applications and data, as well as an array of new client devices. In addition, the rapid adoption of virtualization in the SMB market is driving interest in security solutions targeting virtual environments.

More detailed analysis is available in the report "Market Share Analysis: Security Software, Worldwide, 2012." The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2486015.

About Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit

Gartner analysts will take a deeper look at the outlook for security solutions at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summits taking place June 10-13 in National Harbor, Maryland, August 19-20 in Sydney, Australia and September 18-20 in London, U.K. More information on the U.S. event can be found at www.gartner.com/us/security. Details on the Australia event are at http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/apac/security/. More information on the U.K. event is at http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/emea/security/.

Members of the media can register for press passes to the Summits by contacting [email protected] (U.S.), [email protected] (Sydney) or [email protected] (London).

Information from the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summits 2013 will be shared on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Gartner_inc using #GartnerSEC.

About Gartner

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