The company has announced its line of Trend Micro Internet Security 2007 software. Like Symantec Corp, which announced Norton 2007 recently, Trend has altered its licensing to stay competitive with Microsoft. But unlike Symantec, Trend will not offer its own PC maintenance tools, preferring instead to work with Vista when it comes out.
In terms of licensing, Trend has wisely decided to make the $49.95 base product installable on three PCs, making it comparable in price-per-seat to Microsoft’s OneCare. Previously, Trend’s three-user license cost $79.95. Symantec last week upped the seat-count of its $69.99 Norton Internet Security 2007 to three. NIS 2006 for three PCs cost $119.95.
According to Lane Bess, Trend’s North America general manager, the company was planning this before Microsoft announced its OneCare pricing. When Ryan Hamlin, general manager of OneCare, announced $49.99 for a household, I kinda chuckled… I don’t think we responded, as much as we’re in the same value space.
Some analysts reckon that Microsoft will grab up to 20% of the consumer security market in its first year, based on its well-known brand and visibility, but antivirus firms have had a few years, since Redmond first signaled its intentions, to figure out how to respond to this.
Trend, like Symantec, has decided to tweak its business model in order to keep the customers it already has. Rather than persuading users to buy an upgrade every 12 months, both companies decided to call their respective offerings ‘subscription services’ and auto-bill the buyer’s credit card every year. Users can opt out of this.
In Trend’s case, it is offering a suite of optional add-on tools to persuade customers to become subscribers. Named TrendSecure, the first three offerings are smartphone antivirus, a file encryption utility, and a software keyboard that can be used to avoid keystroke-logging malware.
While the changes are a natural response to Microsoft’s entry to the market, Trend has resisted the temptation to bolt on some PC maintenance utilities that would make it compare well feature-by-feature with OneCare and Norton 360.
Instead, Trend will build on top of functionality expected to ship in Vista to offer these functions, according to Bess. Some may say many of these health features are already parts of the Windows operating system anyway.
It’s very likely that as we look at the Vista [Trend] application, the Vista OS, we will work through collaboration with Microsoft, Trend’s Bess said. I’m not sure it makes sense for Trend to go out and acquire or build any kind of backup application or defrag application.
The new TMIS 2007 package also offers anti-phishing technology, and software for protecting online transactions for the first time. There are also features for cleaning your surfing tracks and manage cookies. Most of the other functions, including antivirus, antispyware and firewall have also been polished and tweaked.
