“There are signs that Apple is finally beginning to prioritize the cloud. In June, the company announced iCloud Photo Library, which will store master copies of photos in the cloudEule writes for Barron’s. “Apple users will still have to pay up for the service; the free option is capped at five gigs. Apple has at least lowered the price for higher tiers; 20 gigs will cost 99 cents a month, and 200 gigs will be $3.99 per month,” Eule writes. “Starting this fall, Apple is also planning to bring a Dropbox-like option to iCloud. Mac and iOS users will be able to save any type of a file in a folder that then gets stored and synced via the cloud.
“Consumers might be willing to pay up for that kind of offering, especially if it means constant access to their growing collection of photos and videos across all Apple devices,” Eule writes. “Katy Huberty, who covers Apple for Morgan Stanley, estimates that iCloud has 450 million users, though it’s unclear how many are paying for upgraded storage. If Apple can persuade those customers to pay for 20 gigs of storage, the company would add $5.3 billion in annual revenue and 32 cents a share in earnings, Huberty estimates.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: With Apple’s forthcoming iCloud Drive, you can safely store any kind of document in iCloud and access them from all your devices and access them from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or even a piece of crap Windows PC. Learn more here.
Also, with Apple’s soon-to-be-released iCloud Photo Library, Every photo and video you take now lives in iCloud — giving you the freedom to access your library from any device, anytime you want. You can access and download your photos and videos anytime from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or the web. Learn more here.
Related articles:
Apple’s new iCloud storage plans: Cheap for consumers, even cheaper for developers – June 8, 2014
Apple unveils new versions of OS X and iOS, major iCloud update with iCloud Drive – June 2, 2014
My main hope for iCloud drive is that it allows file sharing like iDisk did.
Just make it “seamless and easy” for us to get and share ALL kinds of files for the Apple crowd… And THEN I’ll consider the possibility of dropping my DROPBOX account.
Or better yet, just BUY Dropbox and give it an “Apple Makeover” …let’s go!!!😜
I thought some guy named McNamee said that iCloud sucked or something similarly derisive.
Roger McNamee is a tech investor, he praises or damns companies including Apple depending on his self interests at the time (his investments) and not strictly according to the facts.
In 2008 as an investor in Palm (Web OS) he famously stated:
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone, Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”
On the other hand he IS a multi millionaire and he correctly stated that Android is profitless: Android is “equivalent of having a motor scooter at the Indianapolis 500”.
In short: like any analyst they are there mostly for amusement only YOU CAN’T TRUST THEM, make your OWN judgment to all things apple. 🙂
If it’s as functional as Dropbox I’m in for 200GB
I’ll see your 200 and raise you 300!
If they offer the option for two or three factor authentication (NOT two or three level authentication) AND can demonstrate that their service is more secure from hacking than the rest of the Swiss cheese security in the industry AND offer a 1 TB tier, then I’m in.
Otherwise, I’ll wait.
Make iCloud go away. I can’t turn on “Find my iPhone” on my kids phones without iCloud screwing up their music playlists.
Because you’re a moron. RTFM.
What FM?
There a numerous places to get support or find information. For starters go to support.apple.com.
To solve this issue you’re having, go to Settings->Music->Turn off iTunes Match, then go to Settings->iCloud->Turn on Find My iPhone.
Or learn how to use iTunes Match and turn that on.
I don’t subscribe to iTunes Match. What next?
I appreciate your effort to help.
Hey Regular Reader, point to where the FM addresses this.
Or STFU.
” If Apple can persuade those customers to pay for 20 gigs of storage, the company would add $5.3 billion in annual revenue and 32 cents a share in earnings, Huberty estimates.”
All the anal …. Yst ever think of is how much money is made. That is what screws up most companies.
Think of the consumer. Charge a reasonable amount.
Just saying.
Just saying exactly what companies need to hear these days. Sucking every penny out of customers, by crook or by crookeder is only parasitism and self-destruction. It’s NOT capitalism. But there certainly are a lot of deluded MBAs and plain old sick f*ks who think it is. That’s why it FAILs. It’s the spirit of the age in biznizz.
I’m hoping and betting that all the self-destructives are booted out of business and we return back to an age of actual, responsible and customer caring capitalism. It could happen!
I think $1 a month for 20GBs is more than a reasonable amount. It’s unclear whether that represents roughly a 30% margin which is pretty standard for Apple, but it’s certainly price competitive.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple lowers the pricing or offers other plans once the system is fully online, proven, and some infrastructure costs have been realized.
Apple seems to be pretty damn well focused on the consumer here, as they have been for a while… Build the best and charge roughly 30% for it.
From a analyst perspective, give them a break… This guy is just pointing out that roughly 32 cents a share in earnings could be added, which translates into a boost in Apple stock of about $5.23 a share based on today’s valuation. That’s pretty significant, and pretty conservative.
The math and reasoning are pretty sound and the information is relevant for investors… What more could you want from an analyst?
Eldernorm, “Think of the consumer. Charge a reasonable amount.”
That’s virtually unAmerican! If a company can gouge the consumer, then that’s the market talking!
iOS notes can be saved either in the cloud or on the device. I save sensitive data on the device because I don’t completely trust cloud security. To my knowledge, files like pictures can not be saved either or. Hopefully, Apple will give us the option to save each file in the location we choose (on the device or in the cloud).
Everything you said is wrong.
Security: if it was insecure, we would have heard a lot more about criticism. If you really do have sensitive notes, and are insecure about it, then there is an app for that (encryption…and will synchronize across devices).
You can put as many pictures/photo’s on the cloud as you want. They are not called folders, they are called streams.
For all apps supporting cloud, you can choose to store in the cloud or on your Mac.
Remember, iCloud is for working on IMMEDIATE files and sharing. Not for storing when completed.
Read some howto’s and your questions will be answered.
1. “or even a piece of crap Windows PC”
That is hilarious since Apple cannot offer iCloud in the first place without relying on Microsoft Azure. And if it wasn’t Azure, they would have to go to another competitor like Amazon for AWS or to Google. The reasons:
A) Apple does not have the infrastructure or expertise necessary to offer iCloud and it would take them years to acquire both
B) Even if they did, it would be financially inefficient – and possibly money losing – because the infrastructure and talent required to offer iCloud alone would be staggering. The existing cloud companies are able to make money because they were already heavily invested in e-commerce (Amazon), search, email, social networking, video sharing, voice over IP (Microsoft, Google) so they already had the infrastructure, talent and bandwidth. They are also able to share the resources from those existing product lines with cloud to significantly cut costs.
2. Is iCloud better (in terms of innovation, performance, user experience) than the other cloud offerings? Right now it is not. Unless it gets better, there will be no pressing reason to choose iCloud over the other cloud companies, but several reasons not to including but not limited to not already being in the Apple ecosystem (and despite all the talk of Apple’s profits selling at high margins, monetizing iCloud will require the MARKET SHARE that Windows and Android now enjoys). As a matter of fact, even lots of people who own iPods, iPhones, iPads and Macs don’t use iCloud, or don’t use it exclusively.
Remember: Apple did not invent this space, as it existed for years prior. Also, Apple has offered iCloud in some version since 2000 (and especially at least since MobileMe in 2008) and even its current iteration has been since 2012. Yet Apple has not disrupted the existing market by offering a superior product or technology the way that they did with the iPod, iPhone and iPad (and likely will with HealthKit, HomeKit and the iWatch).
So either A) iCloud becoming this huge revenue generator is speculation that is totally without basis and B) even if A) is wrong, Apple making billions on iCloud will only wind up making billions for a competitor (again, right now Microsoft) that Apple will need to actually be able to offer iCloud.
So the editor needs to quit it with the “Microsoft is dead” stuff because so long as Microsoft keeps making billions off Apple, it is not going to happen. (Curiously, Microsoft is also making a nice chunk of change off Android, but that may come to an end soon now that it has been determined that the actual commercial value of the Microsoft patents that Android uses is far smaller than Microsoft claimed, and Google will continue to remove the Microsoft technology from Android with each new release of the OS, just as Android is now looking less and less like iOS – see the new tiles based user experience in Android Lollipop – also.)