Symantec to expand remote PC support
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Symantec Corp (SYMC.O) plans to offer remote technical support for personal computers through subscriptions as it looks to boost revenue from consumers, Chief Operating Officer Enrique Salem said on Monday.
Symantec, the maker of Norton security and utilities software intends to offer the packages as it expands on a service that fixes PC problems at a cost of $69 per incident.
"We're doing a lot more with premium services," Salem said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York. He said the plan will be targeted at some 55 million existing customers.
Other products in Symantec's consumer pipeline include software that allows parents to monitor the Internet use of their children, and a program to permanently wipe data from a hard drive, Salem said.
Salem asked the company's developers to look at the drive-cleaning software after his wife sought such a product to remove personal information from a computer she planned to give away.
Symantec once included such a program in its Norton Utilities package but discontinued the item in the product's bundle of software.
(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)
(Reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
