Mobile security companies fighting for market share

Reported by Cai Wei, Nanfang Daily
Fire of fights in the filed of traditional PC security is spreading to the growing mobile internet industry even in a more intense way. It is disclosed by some sources that the Feiliu Download scandal, which has made a stir in the mobile security industry, has captured the attention of public security organs and three companies involved are under investigation, including Beijing Feiliu Jiutian Technology Co.,Ltd., Beijing Internet Industry Association Judicial Identification Center and Qihoo 360. Some hidden facts about the event are expected to emerge soon.
Mobile Security appeals to security providers
Today, mobile security industry of China has over 300 million users and promises to hit 800 million in the future. This attracts both the long standing security service providers and new startups to flood into the industry to get a share, including NetQin, Qihoo 360 and even traditional PC security companies such as Kaspesky and Rising. Under this circumstance, how to have a head start in grasping market opportunities accurately would be a bet to win.
Both Qihoo 360 and NetQin filed for NYSE IPO successively in mid March. Prospectus of Qihoo 360 records a market share of 58.2% by its product 360 Mobile Guard, according to statistics of iResearch issued in January 2011 based on the activated users while NetQin quoted Frost &Sullivan s research data in the prospectus that NetQin held a market share of 67.7% with 49.01million activated users by the end of 2010
It s easy to see how fierce the competition is from the aggressive comparison, commented an insider, and there is far more than that. The sample tested by Beijing Internet Industry Association Judicial Identification Center used as the evidence of malware spreading may be provided by a competitor of Feiliu, according to the sources.
Guo Qiuli, a lawyer from Guangdong Legal Shengbang Law Firm expressed her idea about this event: if the trustee or the subject that controls or orders the trustee belongs to the same business field as Feiliu, or if they are competitors, it should be identified whether there are business interests involved, whether the sample or other information provided to the identification center is sufficiently impartial and objective, and whether it is vicious unfair competition incurred by the fight for market share extension.
Undercurrent of competition
Actually, there has been a long fight between PC security providers, involving even long-established security companies, such as Rising, Kingsoft and Jiangmin. When Qihoo 360 got in, it gained dominance of the industry by the unusual means of first offering the anti-virus software for free to attract users and then launching other products such as the browser, the Safe Guard and the Network Shield.
Qihoo 360 has blacklisted a large batch of legitimate software from its competitors, and it can vandalize them any time. What is even worse, 360 can add any app to the blacklist whenever it wants to, indicated Rising who used to be the industry leader before Qihoo 360 s free model.
According to statistics from Rising, 186 applications from Microsoft, Tencent, Rising, Kingsoft, NetEase Sogou and Thunder, etc. are blacklisted by 360. Kingsoft also condemned 360 openly last May, claiming that they had received massive complaints from users about Kingsoft Network Shield being maliciously uninstalled by 360 Safe Guard.
However, Qihoo 360 so far hasn t responded to the condemnation. Given the sophisticated business environment, Senior Fellow Peng Peng from Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences stressed that Chinese enterprises must follow the world s business civilization to go global and disconnection from the outside world will lead to nowhere.
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