Global security software revenue reached $16.5bn in 2010, a 12% increase from 2009 revenue of $14.7bn, according to Gartner.
Gartner said the 2010 results showed that overall vendor revenue demonstrated a rebound in growth after a sharp fall in performance in 2009 due to the slow economy and tight IT budgets.
Growth across the security segments showed great variation, with more mature areas including: endpoint security and Web access management, showing single-digit growth, while security information and event management (SIEM) and secure Web gateway products experienced double-digit growth.
Symantec retained its market share lead and accounted for nearly 19% of total security software revenue in 2010.
However, performance of the largest players varied considerably with Symantec, Trend Micro and IBM recording below-average growth, while other larger players, such as EMC, experienced above-average growth.
Gartner principal research analyst Ruggero Contu said products within the security market are undergoing rapid evolution in terms of both new delivery models with security-as-a-service showing increasing popularity and new technologies being introduced, often by startup companies.
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"Key vendors continued to expand their product portfolios, buying companies where appropriate and expanding their reach into emerging markets," Contu said.
"At the top are the large vendors Symantec and McAfee, with a strong presence in both the consumer and enterprise markets, as well as 30% combined market share; on the second tier is a group of vendors that offer a breadth of product capabilities covering many of the security segments some with an almost complete focus on security, such as Trend Micro, and others, such as IBM, EMC, Cisco and CA Technologies, for which security is only a part of overall corporate interests.
A third tier is composed of specialised midsize vendors, such as Kaspersky, Websense, Sophos, Blue Coat Systems and ESET, which tend to have more of a focus on certain segments in which they have built a relatively strong presence while the fourth tier is composed of large IT vendors with a small presence in the security space or small players with specialisation in one or two security segments."
