As I've studied trends in the Internet security and parental controls market over the past year or so, multiple conversations with major players in this space have come back to one main thought - it is incredibly difficult to sell stand-alone features in this market. No matter how innovative a solution may be (for example, the ability to analyze a child's activity on social networks to determine the threat level), product managers believe that their ability to integrate features into existing offerings is the way to go.
One such feature I covered a couple of months ago was location monitoring services, exemplified by products from Location Labs. Used by major mobile operators for location and mobile management functions, the company reported that it had surpassed one million paying subscribers (the total now sits at 1.3 million).
AVG Technologies has now announced its intention of acquiring Location Labs. In a blog post a couple of days ago, the company says that it's taking a "holistic" approach to the security market by integrating Location Labs' solutions into its current offerings for mobile security.
It will be interesting to see what kind of offerings emerge from this relationship. I'll be interested to see how customer acquisition grows with new product offerings.
