The new study, now available on ASDReports, expects the global number of personal cloud accounts to grow to just under 4 bn by 2018

Monday 7 July 2014, Amsterdam

Report description overview:

The new report, The Personal Cloud: A Strategic Imperative for Operators - Competitive Market Trends, Forecasts and Operator Business Models provides an overview of operators and cloud computing, an analysis of the personal cloud market, the results of an operator online survey about their views on personal cloud and a detailed assessment of how operators are positioning their personal cloud services.

The report's difference:


Report highlights:

A personal cloud is a virtual storage service offering device backup, sync, data sharing and n-device access capabilities. The personal cloud business is dominated by some very large US-based technology companies: Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft as well as independent specialist Dropbox. As competition between these companies has intensified in the past couple of years, market adoption has ballooned: the global number of personal storage accounts has reached  60% annual growth since 2011. At the same time, operators have increasingly focused on the personal cloud, and we expect that more than half of all operators around the world will have launched such a service by the end of 2014.

During the past two years, many more operators have launched services, typically upgrading their backup services to full personal cloud capabilities, with business models focusing on: Churn reduction: Personal clouds lends themselves to lowering churn, selling higher-end packages and bundling and premium revenue: Operators have an advantage in their billing relationships.

Cloud computing matters to operators on several levels; personal clouds could become more important than a user’s primary device, shifting value to access and services in the consumer ICT market.