On the eve of Research In Motion's developer conference in Orlando, Fla., one analyst warned that the company may lose out on even more precious market share to Apple and Google. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Sue told Reuters that Apple and Samsung continue to lead the race for the top spot, while others are "donating" market share. At the last count, RIM had 8.8 percent of the market share for the fourth-quarter, according to research group Gartner, a figure down by nearly half on the year earlier. ComScore figures for November-February show a a steeper drop. with HTC replacing RIM in fifth place in the top mobile OEMs category, indicating less than 6.3 percent of the mobile market share. But while RIM aims to launch its next-generation BlackBerry smartphones later this year -- pegged for October, reports suggest -- the company could find its market share dropping 5 percent or less, Sue said. RIM only has a trickle of new BlackBerry customers as the company loses ground to smartphone makers with greater popularity. In the meantime, RIM is branching out to the emerging markets for a short-term revenue "hit" in order to prop the company up until BlackBerry 10 devices launch. But in taking the long view, RIM could bounce back. It means a strategy shift for the company. First and foremost, it needs to get BlackBerry 10 out the door sooner rather than later. But if it's not ready, it's not ready. It can't pull a 'PlayBook' with a smartphone line-up and release the hardware without crucial elements of the smartphone like it did with its tablet. RIM will just have to wait until its long-term fix comes in. If BlackBerry 10 fails, likely the company will, too.

ZoneAlarm is making an aggressive move to attract new people to its line of security programs with what may be a first: a free antivirus program pre-packaged with a free firewall.

Available exclusively from Download.com today, ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus+Firewall 2013 (download) could very well make big waves in the free security-suite space. It's the same free firewall that ZoneAlarm has produced for years, but with basic antivirus and anti-malware tools included. It's basically ZoneAlarm Pro Antivirus+Firewall from last year, with an updated engine. And did I mention that it's free?

The free security suite market is highly competitive, and people use the free suites on a scale not comparable with any other software besides the browser. Avast, Avira, and AVG combined claim more than 400 million active installations, according to OPSWAT's analysis for the first quarter of 2012. ZoneAlarm is optimistic about getting in on that action. "We know we will be in the tens of millions this year," said Mark Brier, head of freemium marketing for ZoneAlarm.
This chart shows the differences between ZoneAlarm's security suites.

This chart shows the differences between ZoneAlarm's security suites.
(Credit: CheckPoint/ZoneAlarm)

The new Free edition does have some additional limitations, though. Automatic virus definition file and signature updates, the locally-stored file that helps identify threats, are limited to once every 24 hours. You can always manually update it, but this is a notable limitation. ZoneAlarm Free also lacks the expert rules option available in the paid version of the firewall. The company will continue to maintain its free firewall without antivirus, for people who want it.

The big news is the combination of the two-way firewall and antivirus, although ZoneAlarm has made the suite appealing in other ways, too. Advanced scan options are enabled by default, but provide room for customization; and there are extras like 2 GB of free online storage and a free identity and credit monitoring service for U.S.-based customers.

It comes with a toolbar that does enable protection against third-party exploits, but even if you opt-out of having ZoneAlarm change your default search engine or default home page during installation, it still manages to muck some things up.

ZoneAlarm Free is also a bit weak in other security areas. If you're looking for solid privacy protections out of the box, AVG Free offers a site-tracking blocker, while Avast provides a sandboxing feature to keep suspicious programs from doing damage.

CNET Labs found ZoneAlarm Free to be fairly competitive with the past year's suites, with a faster than average impact on startup time, a shutdown impact that was only a few seconds slower than average, and a scan time that was one-third faster than last year's ZoneAlarm Pro. Real-world scan time averaged three minutes, 46 seconds for the quick scan, and more than two hours for the full scan.

It has been a while since ZoneAlarm has been submitted for independent efficacy testing from AV-Test.org, AV-Comparatives.org, or West Coast Labs, which makes it hard to evaluate how this well-known name holds up against the competition. However, if people flock to it as Mark Brier and others at ZoneAlarm hope, it could cause both free and paid security suite makers to reevaluate what features ought to be made free to all.