ICloud Current Situation Analysis
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company is widely recognized by its logo which is an apple that is bitten on the right side which symbolizes lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy. Apple’s most famous products include the iPad, the iPhone, the iPod, and the MacBook series of laptops. All products offered by Apple use the iOS operational system.
On August 20th, 2012 the company’s value broke the world record which is 624 billion dollars. iCloud is one of the company’s flagship applications, which allows its users to store data on remote computer servers, so that they can synchronize that data with almost every device that has the iOS system. The iCloud system provides its users with the ability to upload everything from music to books, photos, apps, and etc. Every iCloud account offers 5gb of free storage space, additional space be purchased in 10, 20 or 50 GB.
Other features that the application has are Find My Phone which allows users to track the location of their iOS device or Mac. Find My Friends is another feature which allows users to share their location. Back To My Mac is a service on the iCloud that allows users to login remotely to other computers configured with the same Apple ID. iTunes Match is newest feature of the storage app, customers can match and scan tracks from CDs or other sources and listen to the same tracks on iTunes free of charge. Cloud’s main competitors include Amazon Cloud Drive, Box. net, Dropbox, and Microsoft Skydrive. Amazon Cloud Drive is a storage system much like the iCloud, it was launched in March 2011 by Amazon. com, just like the iCloud it offers 5 GB of free storage, any additional storage can be purchased, the cost is 1$ per GB a year, which is a lot cheaper than the product that Apple Inc. offers. Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by Dropbox Inc. which offers client software, file synchronization and cloud storage.
Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on each personal computer that they have, which then Dropbox synchronizes so that the folder and its contents can be viewed on every PC or phone that it is synchronized with. Unlike Apple and Amazon, Dropbox only offers 2 GB of free space, while the paid Pro account offers up to 100 GB. Dropbox works with iOS, Android and Blackberry for mobile users and on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Which is amazing because itis one of the few storage services that can be used on multiple software platforms. Box. net has been on the market since 2005 and has been a powerhouse in the segment.
The personal edition of Box. net offers 5 GB of free space, while the maximum that can be purchased is 500 GB for 15 dollars a month with enhanced features. Box. net just like Dropbox works on multiple platforms. Microsoft Skydrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage system. The system offers 7 GB of free space, users that signed up prior to April 22nd received 25 GB of free storage enhancement. The service uses HTML5 technologies which allows customers to upload files of up to 300 MB in size by dragging and dropping the file into the web browser. Microsoft Skydrive works only for Windows Home and Windows Phone users.
