14 DAY TRIAL // If you’re in the market looking for an anti-virus product that comes with a freeware license, you definitely need to have a look at Microsoft’s Security Essentials, as statistics show that this is currently the number one anti-virus worldwide in terms of market share.
OPSWAT claims that 16.3 percent of users are now running Security Essentials on their Windows computers, while Avast! Free Antivirus comes second with 13.2 percent.
Windows Defender, which is the default security product installed on Windows 8 computer, is far behind with 6.2 percent, and so is Avira Free Antivirus with 5 percent of the Windows computers.
“Compared to past reports, a general decrease in occurrence of the top four products has resulted in a more even distribution of products in the current report. Overall, 15 products show more than two percent market share, and only 62% of all antivirus products detected fall into the top ten products. These results only include devices with RTP enabled,” OPSWAT explained in the report.
Microsoft Security Essentials is considered the baseline security product and can be installed free of charge by all those running a pre-Windows 8 operating system.
Unfortunately for Windows XP users, Microsoft will remove download links for Security Essentials in April, in an attempt convince users to migrate to a newer platform.
And still, the company will continue to release virus definition updates for Windows XP machines still running Security Essentials until mid-2015, thus helping users stay protected for one more year after the operating system officially goes dark.
Just like Security Essentials, Windows XP is amazingly popular these days and even though an anti-virus product won’t be able to secure it completely after end of support comes, 28 percent of those still using a desktop computer are currently running it.