Mcafee sues Currys PC World for not promoting its antivirus

US antivirus company Mcafee is suing retailer Dixons Carphone for allegedly breaking an agreement to promote its software exclusively.

Reports say Dixons Carphone, which owns Currys PC World and Carphone Warehouse stores, signed a four-year deal with Mcafee in 2017 to promote its software across the UK. But Mcafee said it will lose £30m in sales as a result of Dixons also promoting Symantec’s Norton antivirus, as well as selling it as an extra for people buying computers.

Dixons hit back by saying it offered Norton as an antivirus for Windows 10 S laptops because Mcafee can’t run on those models.

Windows 10 S is a limited version of the operating

system built for low-powered laptops, typically used by school pupils. It can only run apps bought from the Microsoft Store, not traditional programs downloaded from the web.

Dixons said that Mcafee wanted its Team Knowhow staff to install security apps like True Key and Web Advisor on Windows 10 S devices. This would apparently be a stop-gap until Mcafee built a version of its antivirus that worked with Windows 10 S.

The retailer dismissed this plan as “not viable”, and said it had been in talks with Mcafee since late 2018 about how the lack of a compatible antivirus meant its customers were “generally being denied the ability to purchase 10 S products”.

In response Mcafee said this shouldn’t have prevented Dixons promoting its software. Mcafee finally released a version for Windows 10 S in June 2019, which Dixons said was too late for a ‘back to school’ laptop promotion it was planning to run between August and the end of October.

The retailer said it expects Windows 10 S devices to make up 41.5 per cent of its sales – around 120,000 laptops – during this period.