Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology.
It’s hard to believe that Apple have been trying its hand on the Internet services space because the year 2000, when it launched iTools. Like the vast majority of iCloud , with which it shares its trademark vowel prefix, iTools was free. Unlike iCloud, though, its selection of services was all around the map, starting from Website creation to greeting cards. iCloud marks the third reboot of Apple’s Web services suite since that foray. Within the intervening years, we have seen .Mac (essentially a subscription version of most iTools features), and MobileMe, which prepared the ground for the contact and calendar synchronization which will be free as portion of iCloud.
Modern-day Apple has shown an appreciation for seamless network access because the launch of the iMac in 1998, which eschewed floppy drives in favor of network-based sharing. It is easy to even trace a belief within the power of the network further back to eWorld, AppleLink, or even the Mac’s early, simple networking technologies, AppleTalk and LocalTalk. Internet services are clearly complementary to advanced devices running sophisticated software — two areas where Apple excels. So why has the cloud rained on Apple?
First, while a crowd of young companies consisting of Dropbox, SugarSync, MiMedia and others have pursued cloud services for consumers and businesses alike, it’s difficult to locate an example of any company that has built profitable and compelling consumer cloud services at Apple’s scale (although a number of this relies on definition). While its ecosystem competitors Google and Microsoft have formed a fierce rivalry in Web media in accordance with search and mapping services — from which Apple has up to now abstained — their network storage initiatives haven’t gotten much further along. Microsoft, for instance, offers 25 GB of cloud-based storage with SkyDrive, but is just now stepping up efforts to hook it into its operating systems. And while Google has long offered growing gigabytes for Gmail, storage of consumer content has taken longer to roll out — Google Music steps up an offering that began with a single gigabyte of free photo storage for PicasaWeb.
Second, it’s been difficult for Apple to pounce on a key maturing technology to present disruptive timing or pricing how it has with other technologies. Unlike with capacitive touch screens and retina displays at the iPhone, flash memory inside the first iPod nano, or 1.8″ hard drives within the original iPod, Apple can’t swoop in, exercise its scale, and fluster competitors.
It’s a beast of a challenge to market something as abstract as “the cloud.” |
Third, and most importantly, the cloud has not drifted into lots of Apple’s areas of excellence — industrial design, marketing and retail. It’s a beast of a challenge to market something as abstract as “the cloud.” Unlike sleek devices that tantalize eyes or software that engages fingertips, good cloud services disappear within the background. Compare the typically static Apple keynote slides to the WWDC ones that required animation for instance the concept that of pushing data to multiple devices. And the cloud cannot be merchandised in an Apple retail store, although store staffers should help explain it.
Over the long-term, Apple must differentiate and achieve the cloud as more of the computing and entertainment value shifts there. For now, though, the cost that it brings would be clouded indeed. The corporate derives relatively little revenue from iTunes music sales, less from free iPhone apps, and no direct revenue for the iLife software when it bundles them with Macs. But all of them contribute to a user experience monetized through its hardware products. Such is the near-term promise of iCloud. Apple users won’t pay for it, but they’ll buy it anyhow.
Ross Rubin ( @rossrubin ) is executive director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group . Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
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