The Rise and Decline of Ruixing Antivirus: History, Market Share, and Current Status

It is widely known that installing antivirus software protects computers, and AV-Test rankings show 360 Security Guard and 360 Antivirus at the top, with Tencent PC Manager in third place.

# Ruixing Rise

Ruixing once dominated the Chinese antivirus market with up to 80% share and annual sales of 7 billion yuan.

Founded in 1991 by Wang Xin, the company initially developed anti‑virus hardware cards before software existed.

During the 1999 CIH virus outbreak, Ruixing quickly released a paid antivirus solution, becoming the first domestic company to tackle CIH, achieving monthly sales of over 100 000 copies and maintaining an 80% market share until 2003.

# Ruixing Glory Fades

In 1999, Kingsoft Antivirus entered the market for free, later introducing paid versions and a "Blue Security Revolution" marketing campaign; in 2006, 360 Security Guard launched as a free product, severely impacting Ruixing, Kingsoft, and Jiangmin.

By 2010, Kingsoft also went free, while Ruixing remained paid until 2011, when it finally switched to a free model and became low‑profile.

In recent years, Ruixing focuses on enterprise information security; the personal version was last updated on April 28 2021 and costs 129 CNY, comparable to 360 Total Security, but the free version shows frequent ad pop‑ups, slows the computer, is hard to uninstall, and conflicts with other antivirus tools such as Huorong.

# Summary

Many software products adopt a free‑to‑paid strategy, but truly free offerings are unsustainable; without reasonable profit, quality assurance and service support become difficult.