Webroot Captures #2 Spot in U.S. Retail Security Software Market

Recent NPD data shows security leader close on heels of leading competitor after gaining 17 points of share in one year

Broomfield, Colo., November 5, 2012

Full Article

 

Link to original NPD article , please.

 

I call shenanigans! No way.

 

It's true, but NPD doesn't publish the data publicly online (it's sent directly to vendors/retailers).

 

Congrats to Joe and the whole Webroot team.

 

Hi PrevxHelp,

Maybe is true, but, with all due respect, without a link or something, this is nothing else than , again,a Webroot employee saying "we are good, believe us".

Here in Canada, if I ask 1o people, maybe 1 ever heard about Webroot.

And all others pools online prove otherwise.

see:http://www.av-comparatives.org/resources/surveys

IT Security Survey 2012----------->From 15 products Webroot is rated 15-th.

No offence,

Claudiu

 

Congratulation Webroot Team. Keep up the great work.

 

They could both be true!

NPD are talking about "market share" and "footprint in the (US) retail market", ie. which product is selling most strongly in the USA at the moment?

On the other hand, AV-Comparatives are asking the question: "Which product are you currently using?" (Claudiu, question 8 is the question you should be looking at in their survey. Question 9 to which you refer is a completely different question)

Just because WSA may have recently become the second strongest selling product doesn't mean that it would yet be the second most used product. However if this trend were to continue long enough, then that would eventually become true.

 

The Title says everything. "Webroot Captures #2 Spot in U.S. Retail Security Software Market" not worldwide as Muddy3 said.

TH

 

This isn't just a Webroot employee saying "believe us" - it is a worldwide press release and if we were lying, we'd be sued/fined/embarrassed beyond belief, so yes, it is true

It is referring to the US, not Canada. I've tried this many times myself, asking completely random people (usually on airplanes or in the airport), and almost no one has heard of Symantec/Kaspersky/Avira either - security companies tend to not be known by name by the average person from what I've seen (ironically even while sitting next to some of their ads posted on the wall )

This is a survey where they ask people questions, not something measuring sales or how many "average" users are using a product. All that this means is that in general, the readers of AV-C are a different type of userbase than the users of WSA. There are many pockets of popularity of different products across the world. For example, look at Rising: it's used by almost everyone in China and almost no one in the US. Webroot has just very recently started to add extended international support - we've always been only English/Japanese and this significantly reduces the worldwide use, and this is additionally limited by in-store sales/resellers/marketing/etc. which takes place in the local countries.

 

My point is that (if I understand correctly) the NDP survey is referring to recent US sales figures, while question 8 in the AV-Comparatives survey refers to what proportion of US customers currently own and use that product.

There will always be a time lag between increase in sales figures, and reaching the situation where a majority of people own that product. If for example I introduce a new bicycle to the market and it sells phenomenally, that doesn't mean that in six to twelve months it will be the bike most commonly owned. It will take longer for that to happen.

Do you follow me? Of course, I may have misunderstood what the NDP survey is measuring.

EDIT: Maybe I have misunderstood what NDP is measuring, judging from PrevxHelp's post above (posted while I was writing this post)?

 

Keep up the good job, congrats!

 

The differences between AV-C and NDP are just the type of user - NDP measures US retail customers whereas AV-C is the technical users who read their reports, which definitely aren't the "average" user worldwide. We see users activate/install very quickly after purchasing so there isn't a delay in play here - it is measuring the number of people buying the software which ends up correlating to the number of users.

 

Thanks!

 

NPD seems to be based on what is going off retail store shelves for that time period. It doesn't count people who buy a computer pre-installed with something, nor does it count the people who just follow the online renewal for that thing when that pre-installed version expires, or even the people who get an AV for free from their ISP. That means that more people buy Webroot at US stores than most other things at US retail stores.

 

Yes, but imagine for argument's sake that market leader Xyz has 50 million users in the USA and Webroot has 40 million users. Imagine that Xyz is selling ½ million AVs to new customers per year while Webroot is selling 1 million AVs (double!) to new customers per year. In this case, Webroot is #1 in terms of new sales. But it will take quite a time before Webroot overtakes Xyz (20 years, actually, in this case).

That was roughly my line of reasoning. But possibly (probably??) the NDP figures include not just new customers' subscriptions but all subscriptions including existing customers' renewal subscriptions. If so, my argument is no longer valid at all

 

NPD don't publish the data publicly online. If you don't like that, I suggest you make it your mission to contact them about it.

 

It's a measure of new users, not renewed users, so it's measuring growth rather than recurring users remaining with a product.

 

So, as brilliant as this news is, it's not quite as wonderful as it sounds at first. Webroot still, presumably, has a long way to go before it becomes the US market leader, and even further before it becomes the world leader in AVs.

But all the same, it's good news, it shows it's on the right track, and imho it deserves to get there.

 

Very true, it is just one data point which shows we're improving, but I'd expect more to continue showing good news as we grow further

 

Great stuff

 

I had no idea, not even the fogiest, that Webroot was doing so well. I am not easily impressed but I am now....

 

Hi PrevxHelp,

"...it is a worldwide press release and if we were lying, we'd be sued/fined/embarrassed beyond belief, so yes, it is true..."

Surveys like this are usually ordered and paid by a specific player on the market, and so the survey is done to the client satisfaction.

That's why the survey is not published and the terms are vague (see:"16-point unit share lead over the number three brand "). To avoid suing they will not say who the “number three brand” is.

I truly believe, if this survey was for internal use , should have stayed internal.

The whole situation is already embarrassing.

Claudiu

 

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but there's just not enough information provided by NPD to come to any conclusions. Here's another 'survey' on AV market share in September 2012:

Worldwide Antivirus Vendor Market Share (OPSWAT): September 2012
http://www.opswat.com/about/media/reports/antivirus-september-2012

http://www.opswat.com/sites/default/files/market-share-report-sept-2012-na-vendor.png

Recent data collected and I can't see Webroot feature anywhere in the OPSWAT report? Not even a little mention. That's not to say 'yah boo' to Webroot, more just to show how totally off base survey data can be, one survey shows one thing, another the total opposite. Of course both could be right, depends on the data, how it was collected, what exactly it is measuring, what is excluded etc etc. make of that what you will.

 

Webroot doesn't report into OPSWAT yet, but we're working on adding this soon. Only vendors that report in here will be reflected (and OPSWAT primarily covers business endpoint protection, which we've just released a product in to recently).