Apple has been trying its luck in the cloud arena for well over 15 years now, but with very little success. Steve Jobs himself had admitted that the MobileMe platform wasn’t up to Apple’s standards, no wonder it failed to cast the magic spell that most of Apple’s offerings did!
Take for example the iPhone or the iPod, which were one of its kinds, and welcomed by not just Mac and Apple fans, but even the regular smartphone users, and MP3/MP4 users open heartedly. However, things were different with MobileMe, and most of the attempts that Apple has made in the cloud arena… But, here comes a slam-dunk reply from Apple – the iCloud!
What is iCloud?
Apple iCloud allows you to store your music, photos, contacts, and everything under the sun, and pushes everything wirelessly to your iDevices!
According to Apple – “iCloud is so much more than a hard drive in the sky. It’s the effortless way to access just about everything on all your devices”
The good news is that unlike earlier occasions, no syncing is required. This simply means you don’t need to waste time and efforts on managing your data and files; iCloud does it all for you.
5GB Storage Free for All
Yes, iCloud is free for all, and you get 5GB of storage to keep your music files, contacts etc, when you sign up for iCloud.
What’s more, this 5GB limits doesn’t include the music apps, e-books, and other apps that you purchase!
And, this implies only your account info, settings, mail, camera roll, and other miscellaneous app data would count towards that 5GB cap, which I’m quite sure would take years to cross.
Apple rightly says – “you’ll find that 5GB goes a long way.”
With the introduction of new iOS5 (though with very little additions), and iCloud, iTunes is expected to become even more popular, growing from $574 M in first half of 2011 to somewhere in excess of $1000 millions.
Future Plans with iCloud
Apple is going to eventually charge about $25/year for iCloud subscription, and make billions selling advertising around the service. Let’s look at some interesting figures…
Even if you divide this revenue in three big chunks – 58 percent for music-labels, and about 12% for publishers, then Apple still gets about 30%, which would be somewhere close to $7.50 per iCloud subscription.
Now, Apple plans on boosting up iPhone sales to move 184 million units, and even if just half of them opt for iCloud, revenues would be in excess of $700 millions.
Coming to the iPad, they’re expecting sales of 75 million iPad units over 2011 and 2012, and once again if you expect 50% iCloud subscription, the revenues would cross $300 Millions.
And, of course, the ever-green iPods won’t stop selling, as Apple plans on selling around 81 million units over 2011 and 2012; with 50% iCloud subscription rate, they’d again get well over $200 millions/year, totaling a mammoth $1.4 billion/year just with
iCloud subscriptions
!
If they really plan on selling iCloud subscriptions at $25/year, Apple’s music revenues would more than double, and even if they were to sell it for $20 or so, they’d still be looking at over $1 billion/year profits with just iCloud subscriptions over 2011 and 2012.
Therefore, iCloud is definitely the next big thing for Apple, and if they succeed to vow their loyal fans, I don’t see any reason why iCloud subscriptions won’t sell like hot cakes, just as iTunes always did!