Fortinet Gains Market Share in Worldwide Security Segment

The growing need for cybersecurity has resulted in significant expenditure among enterprises. According to market research firm IDC, the total security market experienced double-digit growth in sales in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Worldwide sales rose 16.7% YoY to $4.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018. Unit shipments also rose 20% to $1.1 million. The UTM (unified threat management) segment accounted for the majority of revenue growth. This segment’s sales rose 19.7% and now accounts for 51% of the total worldwide security appliance market.

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The other segments such as Web Security and Messaging Security also rose by 5.5% and 18% YoY. The United States continued to lead the total security market with a share of 36.7% in Q4 2018, up from 36% in Q4 2017.

The APeJ (Asia-Pacific excluding Japan) region experienced sales growth of 19%, while the MEA (the Middle East and Africa) sales rose 31.8%.

IDC’s senior analyst of security products stated, “The fourth quarter closed out the year on a strong note with double-digit sequential and annual growth, largely stemming from increased UTM penetration worldwide and strong regional growth in the Asia/Pacific and Middle East regions.”

Fortinet managed to increase sales by 17.7% in the fourth quarter, which was one percentage point above the global sales growth of 16.7%. The company now has a market share of 9.9%, up from 9.8% among global security solution providers.

Palo Alto Networks (PANW) was the other major player to outperform market growth and managed to increase sales by 32% to $569.6 million in the fourth quarter. As seen in the above table, the global security market was led by Cisco (CSCO) with a share of 14.1%, followed by PANW at 12.8%, FTNT at 9.9%, Check Point (CHKP) at 9.5%, and Symantec (SYMC) at 4.2%.

The top five players account for 50.5% of the total market.