SK telecom, the largest carrier in Korea, released its updated cloud service on May 8th, T Bag Plus, to provide more storage up to 10GB. The original service, T Bag, supported only a phone-book, messages and a restricted memory of photos. This upgraded version of T Bag will ignite the competition among personal cloud services. KT, the largest fixed line company and the second largest carrier in Korea, has already provided 50GB storage to a user with a U Cloud Home.
[ Structure of Cloud Computing ]
Source: SKT story(http://sktstory.com/cloud-data-center/)
Cloud computing is not a local trend but a worldwide one. Dropbox is one of the most famous examples in personal clouding. Even Evernote, the application storing notes, adopts a function of uploading files as well as saving memos.
As the number of smartphones and smart TVs increases, customers’ needs substitute an external HDD to a personal cloud service. Though the memory of a cloud service is one tenth of an external HDD, users are likely to keep using the service because of its high mobility. And for now cloud services are almost free of charge.
The market is on early stage but the speed of the growth is very steep. So after gaining a customer base, cloud computing service providers will change the charging scheme. But a usage fee is not the only reason why players are eager to grab a market initiative.
If users store data in a certain area, it means that the cloud service can be a hub of various kinds of contents. If a powerful cloud service provider connects its service channel to VOD or MOD, customers will be able to easily enjoy contents that the cloud service provider recommends. This extended business model is very attractive.
Though it costs high for providers to maintain the system and to expand storage, this is an unavoidable race to grab market initiative of a multi-screen business.