In By the end of 2013, consumer cloud services for accessing content will be integrated into 90 percent of all connected consumer devices, according to technology research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc.
Speaking at a briefing for technology industry executives in Singapore, Gartner managing vice president Andrew Johnson said that the emergence of personal clouds reflects the 4S experience: consumers desire to store, synch, stream, and share their content, regardless of device or platform, seamlessly.
The shift to the personal cloud will accelerate rapidly in 2012 as consumers learn how to use new services on their devices, said Johnson. As cloud services become part of peoples lives, device vendors and platform providers must integrate cloud services in order to win customers in 2012 or risk being displaced by those that offer these services. Brands must stretch across multiple devices, platforms and services.
According to Gartners definition, personal cloud allows consumers to seamlessly store, sync, stream and share using multiple connected devices such as smartphones, media tablets, televisions and PCs over the internet. Consumers have begun to adopt cloud-based services as part of their digital ecosystem, thanks to services such as Netflix, Google Apps, Amazon Music, Microsoft SkyDrive and Apple's iCloud. In a personal cloud, a TV show, for example, can be watched, left and resumed across multiple devices.
The notion of personal cloud is not new, the refinement and diversity of services for consumers is, said Johnson. Online backup and synchronization companies have been offering personal cloud for years. However, a big change has occurred during the past couple of years, with the growing adoption of mobile and portable devices that have limited internal storage and rely heavily on cloud services. What distinguishes the personal cloud from what came before is its ability to store, synchronize, stream and share as needed, allowing consumers greater flexibility in choosing devices and platforms.
Gartner estimates that consumers will spend approximately US$2.2 trillion on digital technology products and services in 2012, or about 10 percent of the average disposable household income. By 2015, consumers will spend some US$2.8 trillion worldwide on connected devices, the services that run them and content that is transferred through them.
However, according to Gartner, growth is not the only opportunity.
Inside the spending envelope, market dynamics will collapse some markets while creating others that expand the captured revenue. Providers of consumer devices, services and content must anticipate the risk of sweeping changes to their business models, said Johnson. The personal cloud will force technology providers not only to rethink how they approach markets, but also, more importantly, how they define markets. Emerging and mature markets are no longer useful market segmentation.
However, traditional storage will not disappear overnight but will, however, be augmented by the consumer personal cloud. Gartner predicts that personal cloud will become widely adopted by 2015, but that in 2014 less than 10 percent of consumers will use cloud services as their main storage.
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