“When Apple committed to the North Carolina data center in mid-2009 the iPhone was two years old. Only 26 million iPhones had been sold to date (about as many as Apple now sells every quarter),” Horace Dediu reports for Asymco.

“Clearly if the commitment was on such a scale there must have been a plan,” Dediu writes. “A big plan.”

“We don’t know for sure if NC was used last week or whether it was handling only part of the load, but let’s assume it was. What I want to think about is how much iCloud would thus cost and hence what would be the cost for alternative providers of such a service,” Dediu reports. “That analysis might let us determine if ‘cloud’ forms a substantial barrier to entry for competitors.”

“Apple spent $0.75 billion in one year. On the building alone. This is why I consider this a down payment. It does not include any of the equipment in the plant. It does not include the cost of operation (incl. labor) or any development costs (R&D),” Dediu writes. “What this level of spending implies is that iCloud (and Siri and iTunes) are expensive. They may seem ephemeral and even trivial as services, but they require a staggering commitment few can make. Apple made that commitment and they made it early on, before the first quarter billion users were even on the horizon.”

Much more in the full article, with the usual excellent charts, here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Dow C." for the heads up.]