McAfee taps emerging mobile security sector
By Liu Baijia (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-07-06 09:33
US information security firm McAfee has opened its sixth research and
development centre in Shenzhen as the company boosts efforts to develop emerging
markets and mobile security.
George Samenuk, chairman and chief executive
officer of the New York Security Exchange-listed firm, said yesterday that the
McAfee centre in South China's Shenzhen would soon expand its engineering team
from 13 to 30.
He said yesterday in Beijing that one of the strategic
changes McAfee had made in the past three years is "to take advantage of
wireless technologies," and Shenzhen's position as a centre for mobile phone
development makes the city an ideal place to conduct research on mobile phone
information security.
The company has two development centres in the
United States, one in Canada, one in the United Kingdom and one in
India.
With more than 400 million mobile phones, China has the world's
largest population of mobile users. And as mobile communications grow in
popularity, handsets have also become a target for viruses and
hackers.
McAfee, which claims to be the largest dedicated information
solutions provider, partnered with China Unicom, the country's second-largest
mobile operator, as part of its efforts to expand in mobile security in the
country.
Zhu Shijun, general manager of China Unicom's date and
fixed-line communications department, said the two companies would first
co-operate on China Unicom's e-mail system so that its subscribers and users can
scan for attacks such as viruses, Trojans and spyware.
Users get a free
30-day trial before they decide whether to subscribe to the services.
The
e-mail service has 5 million paid subscribers and China Unicom has over 130
million mobile subscribers.
Zhu said the co-operation would expand to
other areas such as mobile phones in the future.
Timothy Liu, director of
McAfee China, revealed that his company is also talking with another Chinese
telecom operator to help small and medium enterprises access information
security tools.
China is one of the fastest growing markets for the US
firm, which grew by more than 20 per cent last year with revenue of US$987
million.
Liu said the Chinese market still lags behind Japan and
Australia in the Asia-Pacific region, but he said it would take over the
Australian market soon to become the second-largest for McAfee in the
region.
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