Reader Forum: The outlook for cloud media – sunny or stormy?

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com or tford@rcrwireless.com.
There is an increasing array of digital lockers to store and play media via the cloud. Cloud media has evolved from photo sharing sites (e.g. Flickr, Picasa) to user-generated content (e.g. Facebook, YouTube) to, most recently, cloud services such as Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive and Google Music. These services allow users to store various types of media and data in the cloud, including pictures, videos, music and files. Apple Inc. is expected to enter the fray very shortly with its new iCloud to allow users to store media and data in the cloud – sort of a combination of iTunes and MobileMe. Cloud media has quickly become the new mobile battleground, as hardware and service providers vie to establish their locker as the de facto cloud repository for all of one’s digital assets.
As the rush to cloud media intensifies, however, there are potential obstacles that can impede its growth. Chief amongst these is the potential for fragmentation and confusion. A major purported benefit of media in the cloud is simplicity – the idea being that if all of your media is in one place, you can easily access it anytime, anywhere, across any of your devices, wirelessly. The challenge is that if you store your photos, videos and music across multiple clouds (which is likely, given the multiple options and reasons for using more than one cloud, as no one cloud service is likely to meet all your needs), how do you keep track of where everything is located? Furthermore, each service has its own capabilities and limitations with respect to the types of content, data and devices they support, as well as whether media is available only online or also offline. Then there is the question of how sharing with other people and systems is performed along with privacy concerns, which have been well documented with respect to Facebook and Google Inc., as these sites mine user data for advertising. Many people are uncomfortable with the notion that their private pictures, videos and data are mined, even if anonymously.
A major related issue is digital rights management for commercial content. Different services are staking out different approaches to dealing with DRM and whether they allow such content to be purchased, stored and accessed on their cloud. The lack of clarity around DRM policies can prevent user adoption, as people either can’t access content they want or don’t want to risk being caught in the crossfire between music labels, movie studios and cloud media service providers. The Recording Industry Association of America continues to fight piracy in the cloud by bringing lawsuits against file sharing services, which makes some people wonder about the long term potential of these services. Instead of simplifying user lives, cloud media has the potential to confuse, frustrate and concern.
To address these challenges, there are several accelerators that providers can employ to smooth the path towards cloud media adoption. These include making their digital locker as comprehensive and open as possible. By allowing people to store all of their media and data in one place, it makes them easy to find and catalog what people have.
Another corollary is allowing media and data to be easily accessed across as many devices as possible, including computers, mobile phones, tablets, mp3 players, Internet-connected TVs, etc. The more universal a digital locker, and the fewer strings attached, the greater the addressable market and potential for adoption.
Another critical element is providing content location flexibility, in particular, allowing people to import content from other clouds, not forcing people to store all their content in the cloud but also on PCs or in other clouds, and making it easy to move content in and out of one’s locker. People will be very wary of services that attempt to lock them in. It is also important to make it easy to share cloud media content, while respecting DRM at the same time so people do not need to think twice about violating copyright just because they want an easy way to store, backup, play and share media with friends and family.
There are two other important considerations to accelerate cloud media adoption. The first is making a cloud media service developer-friendly. The recent boom era in smartphones has been fueled in large part by the availability of hundreds of thousands of mobile apps for iPhone and Android. As people store more of their media and data in the cloud, this opens the door for innovative and compelling new media apps that leverage this content, for example, to make it easy to view pictures or videos on different devices.
Making a service developer-friendly means providing the right interfaces while ensuring that user privacy is preserved. For example, a “family album” app might display password-protected pictures and videos of a group of people and only allow access to an album to a defined set of people (perhaps anyone belonging to the collective contacts of the group). It is not difficult but the approach needs to be well thought out and executed.
Another accelerator relates to the monetization of cloud media. Different companies are employing different models, including those based on storage, features, ads and content (i.e. making the cloud service free while making money by selling content). Monetization models are evolving just as quickly as cloud media technology. What is critical for service providers is that they have flexibility to adapt their monetization approach as the market changes. This is definitely a case of one size does not fit all, as there are many market segments in areas of the world that have diverse profiles that need to be monetized using different approaches.
In summary, cloud media has rapidly become one of the fastest growing new mobile services. Like any major new opportunity, it is rife with challenges as well as the potential to generate significant revenue. It is up to the industry to determine whether the forecast for cloud media turns out to be sunnier rather than stormier.