Symantec 2008 Annual Report Download - page 91

We invest in various retention marketing and customer loyalty programs to help drive renewals and encourage
customer advocacy and referrals. We also provide focused vertical marketing programs in targeted industries and
countries.
We typically offer two types of rebate programs within most countries: volume incentive rebates to channel
partners and promotional rebates to distributors and end-users. Distributors and resellers earn volume incentive
rebates primarily based upon product sales to end-users. We also offer rebates to individual users who purchase
products through various resale channels.
We regularly offer upgrade rebates to consumers purchasing a new version of a product. Both volume incentive
rebates and end-user rebates are accrued as an offset to revenue.
Support
Symantec has centralized support facilities throughout the world that provide rapid, around-the-clock
responses to a wide range of customer inquiries. We have support facilities with experts in technical areas
associated with the products we produce and the operating environments in which these products are deployed by
many of our customers. Our technical support experts provide customers with information on product implemen-
tation and usage, issue resolution, and countermeasures and identification tools for new threats. Support is available
in multiple languages including Cantonese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin,
Portuguese, and Spanish. We believe that enhanced language support is an important element of our success and
plan to continue our investments in the delivery of non-English technical support.
Symantec provides customers various levels of enterprise support offerings depending on their needs. Business
Critical Services, our highest level of protection provides personalized, proactive support from technical experts for
enterprises that require secure, uninterrupted access to their data and applications. Our enterprise security support
program offers annual maintenance support contracts to enterprise customers worldwide, including content,
upgrades, and technical support. Our standard technical support includes the following: unlimited hotline service
delivered by telephone, fax, email, and over the Internet; immediate patches for severe problems; and, periodic
software updates and access to our technical knowledge base and frequently asked questions.
Our consumer product support program provides self-help online services, phone, chat, and email support to
consumers worldwide. A team of product experts, editors, and language translators are dedicated to maintaining the
robustness of the online knowledge base. Generally, we use an outside vendor to provide telephone product support
for a fee. Customers that subscribe to LiveUpdate receive automatic downloads of the latest virus definitions,
application bug fixes, and patches for most of our consumer products.
Customers
Our solutions are used worldwide by individual and enterprise customers in a wide variety of industries, small,
medium and large enterprises, as well as various governmental entities. In fiscal 2008, 2007 and 2006, one
distributor, Ingram Micro, accounted for 10%, 11% and 13%, respectively, of our total net revenues. Our distributor
arrangements with Ingram Micro consist of several non-exclusive, independently negotiated agreements with its
subsidiaries, each of which cover different countries or regions. Each of these agreements is separately negotiated
and is independent of any other contract (such as a master distribution agreement), and these agreements are not
based on the same form of contract. None of these contracts was individually responsible for over 10 percent of our
total net revenues in each of the last three fiscal years. In fiscal 2008, 2007 and 2006, one reseller, Digital River,
accounted for 11%, 12% and 11%, respectively, of our total net revenues.
Research and Development
Research and development expenses, exclusive of in-process research and development associated with
acquisitions, were $895 million, $867 million, and $682 million in fiscal 2008, 2007, and 2006, respectively. We
believe that technical leadership is essential to our success and we expect to continue to commit substantial
resources to research and development.
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