NEW DELHI, INDIA: Symantec announced the launch of Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton AntiVirus 2009 in India. Norton 2009 was compared to existing security products in the market by independent test labs PassMark Software and AV-Test in a lead up to its global launch.

“Norton 2009 is a significant product in our history given the advancements over our existing product lines, in response to both user feedback and the rapidly evolving, complex nature of security threats and risks. Both products are supported by more than 300 improvements that span nearly every aspect of the product, from the scanning engines to the user interface,” said Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Symantec India.

Dhupar added, “According to Gartner’s recent report released in September 2008, all PCs sold in India are from the top 20- 100 cities. The same report estimates that by 2012, the Indian market will ship nearly 24 million PCs (including mobile PCs). This is about 120 percent over the 10.29 million total number of PCs and notebooks shipped in India in the last year as stated by IDC. In India, we expect new users of the Norton products to come from tier-2 and 3 cities as these markets are driving the rapid PC penetration in India. Symantec has already expanded our reach in tier-2 and 3 cities by 30 percent over the last six months. We expect to double the number of locations covered in the next fiscal. We have already started to ramp up our distribution network and will expand our reach to 300 locations including all state capitals by FY2009.”

David Freer, VP—Consumer Business in Asia Pacific and Japan, Symantec said, “We looked at performance in recent releases, but with an eye for mapping to an industry standard. The big shift with 2009 is that we’re redefining what a security product should look and feel like running on a PC. It was no longer acceptable to simply match the performance of others if they were still bloated and causing a performance drains on system resources. We re-engineered Norton 2009 to be the company’s fastest security product, so light and fast, you never know it’s there until you need it.Symantec has also now announced free unlimited English language support in India by chat or phone support during local business hours for a period of one year from initial product installation at just the cost of the local phone call or Internet access.”