Cupertino, Calif. --January 20, 1998--Symantec Corporation (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced its fifth consecutive record quarter with results for the December quarter 1997 (ended January 2, 1998). The company posted net revenues of $148.2 million, up 20 percent from the corresponding quarter in 1996. Earnings per share rose 48 percent to 37 cents for the December quarter.

"The growth in our international business combined with the momentum of our base business has helped deliver a fifth consecutive revenue and profit quarter record for our shareholders," said Gordon E. Eubanks Jr., president and CEO of Symantec. "Throughout 1997 we maintained 20 percent revenue growth and won significant new corporate clients. By focusing our development efforts on understanding the needs of customers in new markets and producing innovative products to satisfy them, we are confident of maintaining the momentum in 1998."

Symantec Corporation is a worldwide leader in desktop software that helps make users productive and keep their computers safe and reliable anywhere and anytime. The strong performance of Symantec's operations around the world is a significant factor in the record December quarter results. In particular contributions from EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) increased 35 percent over the corresponding period in 1996.

In North America, the company expanded its channel with the addition of 450 new VARs in the December quarter. Symantec was also named "Vendor of the Year" by Staples and "Software Vendor of the Year" by CompUSA during the quarter, and Visual Café won Merisel Hot List awards.

Symantec's business units maintained strong revenue growth throughout 1997. For the 12 month calendar period, revenue in the Security and Assistance Business Unit and Remote Productivity Solutions Business Unit grew 25 percent and 23 percent respectively. In the December quarter, a number of innovative products were launched including Norton Uninstall Deluxe.

Performance in the Internet Tools Business Unit remained strong with the launch of new products including Visual Café 2.1 for Java Professional Development Edition and Database Development Edition. The product is the first to be able to de-bug Java apps in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer.

Across the world the Norton AntiVirus product line continued to perform strongly. A series of high profile corporate client accounts were secured, including Nestle and Unisys which selected the solution as their global anti-virus standard for 70,000 and 25,000 workstations respectively in more than 200 locations around the world. Hewlett Packard standardized on Norton AntiVirus for its 2,000 servers worldwide, and Wells Fargo replaced a competitive product with Norton AntiVirus and standardized on pcANYWHERE.

Quarter highlights

• New products including Norton Utilities 3.0, Norton Crashguard Deluxe, Norton Uninstall Deluxe, pcANYWHERE CE 1.02 and Visual Café 2.1 for Java were launched successfully.
• Symantec added Norton Zip Rescue to Norton Utilities following the announcement of a partnership agreement with Iomega Corporation, the world's leading zip drive manufacturer.
• Independent testing by the National Software Testing Laboratories (NSTL) revealed that Norton Crashguard Deluxe is over three times more effective than any other product on the market at crash protection and recovery.
• LiveUpdate requests averaged 5.4 million a month representing more than two terabytes of data downloaded per month.
• Symantec increased its share of the remote access software market to 74 per cent compared to 60 percent in the previous December quarter.
• The County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors awarded Symantec a proclamation in recognition of the company's support of the Telecommute America Week initiative to encourage citizens to telecommute.
• More than 60,000 people visited the Symantec booth at Comdex '97 and over 10,000 free trialware CDs of new Symantec products were distributed.
• Symantec launched version 3.0 of its defacto industry standard Just in Time Java bytecode compiler (JIT). Released test scores show Symantec's JIT runs Java applets and applications over 50 percent faster than any other JIT available
• Fortune 500 companies, including CISCO, HP, Boeing, Blue Cross, Siemens Nixdorf, Swiss Bank, United Airlines and British Airways amongst others selected Visual Cafe for Java development tools to build Java based business application solutions.
• Symantec and Oracle signed an agreement to deliver enterprise web solutions to enterprise customers. Oracle has licensed Symantec Visual Page and will bundle it with Oracle's Application Server 4.0 to provide the ability to create and deploy Web sites that are reliable, scaleable, and easy to maintain.

Product awards and accolades
Symantec products continued to be recognized by the press for their innovation during the December quarter:

• PC Magazine called Visual Café "unmatched" and decorated the product with its prestigious Technical Excellence Award. Byte also recognized Visual Café with an Editor's Choice Award.
• Norton Utilities and Norton AntiVirus featured in PC Magazine's 125 Best Software Titles list.
• Norton AntiVirus, Norton Utilities, Visual Café and ACT! all received prestigious MVP (Most Valuable Products) awards from PC/Computing and featured in the magazine's A-List during all three months of the quarter.
• In November Norton AntiVirus received the Windows Sources Stellar Award. Norton AntiVirus and Norton Utilities also were also placed in the Windows Magazine Top Ten List.
• NetworkVAR readers voted pcANYWHERE Best Remote Access Product and an Integrators' Choice Award recipient. And InfoSecurity News voted pcANYWHERE Editor's Choice, and Mobile Computing awarded the product its First Class Award.

Each year Home Office Computing recognizes the "smartest buys for business" and this year made Editor's Picks Awards to Norton AntiVirus and Norton Utilities. In addition, Small Business Computing also awarded Norton Utilities and Norton AntiVirus Editors' Picks Awards.

Download Consolidated Statements of Operations here.

About Symantec
Symantec Corporation helps make users productive and keep their computers safe and reliable anywhere and anytime. Symantec offers a broad range of solutions and is acclaimed as a leader in both customer satisfaction and product brand recognition. The company is focused on addressing customer needs in three main application areas: the Norton product line of anti-virus and PC-assistance products; the pcANYWHERE, WinFax and ACT! product lines that cater to remote user productivity; and the Cafe product lines in Internet development tools.

Founded in 1982, the company's global operations span North America, Europe, Japan and several fast growing markets throughout Asia Pacific and Latin America. Traded on Nasdaq under the symbol SYMC, Symantec Corporation is based in Cupertino, California and employs more than 2,000 people. Information on the company and its products can be obtained by calling (800) 441-7234 toll free, (541) 334-6054 or accessed on the World Wide Web at http://www.symantec.com.

Forward looking statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements. There are certain important factors that could cause Symantec's future development efforts to differ materially from those anticipated by some of the statements made above. Among these are the anticipation of the growth of certain market segments, the positioning of Symantec's products in those segments, the competitive environment in the software industry, dependence on other products, changes to operating systems and product strategy by vendors of operating systems, and the importance of new Symantec products. Additional information concerning those and other factors is contained in the "Risk Factors" section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 28, 1997 and in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended October 3, 1997.

NOTE TO EDITORS: If you would like additional information on Symantec Corporation and its products, please view the Symantec Press Center at http://www.symantec.com/PressCenter/ on Symantec's web site.

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