On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based startup announced a distribution deal with Australian telco Telstra, and will have similar deals in Canada and the U.K., followed by non-English speaking countries. Lookout will also come out with five to 10 localized, translated versions over the next six months.
There are no immediate plans for China, but Lookout's international product manager, Jonathan Stull, acknowledged that "every company with global ambitions has to have a Chinese product."
Although Lookout's mobile security products are already available overseas through the Android Market, carriers can vastly improve distribution by preloading Lookout protection. In the U.S., Lookout has similar deals with Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
Lookout boasts 12 million users and adds around 1 million every month. Thirty percent of its customers are from overseas, and 40-45 percent of new users are international.
For now, the international rollout will only focus on protecting Android smartphones. Lookout launched its first iPhone security app earlier this month, but as PCMag security analyst Neil Rubenking noted, the iPhone offering is a bit different from its Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile counterparts. It doesn't have an anti-malware component, for example, since iPhone malware barely exists. Lookout will also warn iPhone users if their phone is jailbroken, or if it lacks the latest version of the OS. It also issues warnings about location tracking and unsecured networks. Meanwhile, Android devices get a full antivirus scan, which is important in light of the malware scams that have hit the platform of late.
Lookout scans billions of apps each month. Stull said most Android malware originates in third-party app stores in China and Russia before spreading around the world. Typically this happens in a matter of days but as malware writers begin automating their repackaging process, Stull said the cycle was shrinking. And it shows in the sheer volume of poisoned Android apps. At the end of 2010, Lookout detected 80 unique pieces of Android malware. So far in 2011, it's seen over 1,000.
Things may develop just as quickly on iOS. On Monday, a veteran Mac and iOS hacker demonstrated how he hijacked an iPhone through a poisoned app; the next day, Apple controversially suspended his developers license.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:16pm ET. Lookout scans billions, not millions, of apps each month.