Windows 8 users prefer third-party antivirus to bundled tool

August 24, 2013

Microsoft's Security Essentials (MSE) remains a hugely popular consumer antivirus product but new figures suggest that its Windows 8 successor, Defender, is losing out to third-party alternatives. Security tools firm OPSWAT has carried out market share analysis of antivirus clients using numbers from its AppRemover tool in the past, but the latest stats are derived from its new security assessment application, Security Score, released in June. This time the firm divided its results into three categories; the most popular vendors overall, the most encountered individual products and the most encountered individual products that had real-time protection enabled (or not), coming up with some interesting numbers. Not surprisingly, the frequency of Microsoft's Security Essentials (the standard Windows antivirus client) and Windows Defender (which was upgraded to succeed it on Windows 8) topped the list at a combined 25.8 percent, just ahead of Avast Software's 23.6 percent. A clutch of other familair vendors scored under 10 percent, including AVG, Symantec, Eset, Avira, and Kaspersky. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047365/windows-8-users-prefer-third-party-antivirus-to-bundled-tool.html#tk.rss_all