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Apps & Software

Symantec’s Bad News, And Then There’s Microsoft

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Symantec, the security software company, said that it was lowering its expectation for the quarter ending December 29. The estimate for the current quarter was not so hot either. The news took down Symantec’s stock by 7% to $19.

Symantec (SYMC) and McAfee (MFE), it primary rival, have been complaining for some time that Microsoft Vista would make use of its near-monopoly in operating systems to promote its own security software, PatchGuard. Microsoft (MSFT) recently made tools available to both companies so that they can better integrate their software with Vista.

If Symantec’s earnings are hurting its stock, the latest quarters may just be the beginning. With over $7 billion in security software sold each year, MSFT is not going to let SYMC and MFE keep the lion’s share of the market.

For Symantec, not good. And, it will make McAfee’s earnings more dramatic.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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