Which consumer cybersecurity providers have secured the best position to capture future growth?

In April, Claro Chile unveiled a new partnership with CYAN designed to provide its mobile subscribers with online protection. Other America Movil subsidiaries elsewhere in Latin America had already been offering similar services to their customers (Claro Brazil, Claro Paraguay or Claro Peru). After Chile, one can reasonably expect similar deals to be signed by subsidiaries from smaller markets still untapped (Guatemala, Nicaragua…). Whereas businesses have long been protecting their digital infrastructure, consumer broadband security is yet to become mainstream. It has been gaining traction over the past years, as digitization pushes more critical individual data online, thus attracting more threats.  Which markets have already reached scale? What companies have secured strongholds on their preferred segments? What different types of security providers are there, and what strategies have they adopted? Here is a quick overview of the current state of the market to provide answers to these questions. A bull market with many growth opportunities The consumer cybersecurity market has been growing steadily over the past few years, and reached over $8.6 billion in 2024. The bulk of revenues came from desktop offers, while the remainder came from mobile offers. The US largely dominates country rankings, with over 40% of the global market revenue, followed by Japan and the UK. Western Europe takes 12 out of the top 20 spots, alongside high-revenue countries such as Australia and demographic giants such as China and Brazil. In other words, consumer broadband security is still largely curtailed to rich countries, where it is perceived as a “must have” rather than a “nice to have” added-value service. Indeed, the penetration of cybersecurity services is still very low even in leading markets. Dataxis estimates the total number of paid subscribers to such offers to stand at 135 million worldwide. Subscribers to mobile cybersecurity offers have been growing at a faster pace than those subscribing to desktop cybersecurity offers between 2019 and 2024 (CAGR of 7.4% and 5.9% respectively), but still account for less than a fourth of total subscribers. As shown by the map below, the ratio of mobile cybersecurity subscribers over smartphone owners hardly crossed 5% in any market in 2024. In the US, it stands at 2.3%. Similar analysis on the desktop side also entails low penetration rates, though higher than on the mobile side. The ratio of desktop cybersecurity subscribers over the computers installed base is below 15% in the US and Canada, below 10% in Europe's top 5 markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK). High pricing and lack of consumer education have so far prevented consumer cybersecurity offers to become mainstream. In other words, there is wide room for growth, under the condition of more affordable pricing with respect to...