Microsoft said Thursday that it would enter the consumer antivirus business as part of a subscription service it plans to offer next year.
Microsoft said a companywide trial of the service, called Windows OneCare, would begin next week. The service will include virus and spyware protection as well as PC backup and performance-enhancing functions for Windows PCs.
The move would bring Microsoft into direct competition most notably with Symantec and McAfee, the major publishers of antivirus software and other utilities for Windows PCs.
Microsoft plans to expand the service beyond its 60,000 employees this summer and offer an open trial for consumers this fall. No date has been set for a commercial introduction, but the executive in charge of the new business said it would ultimately be offered as an annual service by subscription.
Microsoft has been developing the service for three years, said Ryan Hamlin, general manager of the Microsoft Technology Care and Safety Group. He said the company was responding to consumer demand for performance-enhancing features -- such as defragmenting disks when the software found it necessary -- as a service priced separately from the operating system itself.
"We realized that many people are unprotected," he said. Microsoft's research revealed that as many as 70 percent of PC consumers do not have the most up-to-date virus protection.
Microsoft's decision to charge a fee is justifiable, he said, because most consumers do not want to be responsible for the care of their PCs but just want them to work correctly.
"I feel better pulling into a garage and saying, `Do it for me,'" he said. "This is targeted at the Jiffy Lube customer."
Reacting to the Microsoft announcement, Symantec, whose products include Norton Antivirus and Norton Utilities, issued a statement saying, "We are prepared to compete on a combination of technology and the back-end infrastructure required to support it; the strength of our relationships with our channel partners; and most importantly, the strength of the relationships we have with tens of millions of consumers."
Microsoft has acquired several antivirus and anti-spyware companies in the last two years, so its entry into the consumer market for computer security had been expected.
Microsoft acquired assets of GeCAD Software, a provider of antivirus technology based in Romania, in 2003.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day