Personal Cloud Boost Driven by Mobile, Video and Beyond
The personal cloud industry is seeing a lot of updates as countless companies – from startups to some of the biggest players in tech – try to take a shot at monetizing this exploding market. As competition intensifies, increasingly innovative offerings surface and grow their market share – just like some of the more recent new twists to some of the most established services out there.
Netflix and Hulu for example are tapping the U.K TV industry to offer customers a more unique content experience.
“Netflix and Hulu have made international television more accessible than ever. Now, one’s favorite “new” show is often phrased as a “discovery.” And often, viewers’ interests lead beyond borders. Broadcast television, of course, offers many cable stations from abroad. But in the vast digital repositories of Hulu and Netflix, shows aren’t segregated by country of origin.”
The two video streaming giants are taking a new approach, and so does startup MoviePass. The $50/month service seems like a sort of Netflix for theaters – it gives users unlimited access to movies in theaters by converting their phones into tickets. The app is initially only an HTML5 application, and will be hitting private beta this week.
The smartphone scene is seeing a lot of innovation as well, thanks to a growing number of users worldwide and an ever-increasing number of tools made available to developers. Some companies, however, are (literally) thinking outside the box. SweetLabs, launched a new cross-platform product that lets users run apps on Windows. The offering has been dubbed Pokki.
SweetLabs is doing something similar to what Microsoft itself is planning to do with the upcoming WP7: bridge some of the gaps between PC and mobile, specifically for the tablet audience. Microsoft was expected to launch the OS in Q3-Q4, but a recent rumor has it that Microsoft may be launching the third version of the platform in April that year. Apple has also been stirring some buzz with its own product launch rumors, with creditable reports suggesting that the iPhone 5 – and maybe another model –will enter production this August.
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