The tagline for this year's Mobile World Congress in Shanghai is 'Mobile is Me'. That's based on the idea that people will be more focused on their smart phones in the future and creating tons of content -- selfies and family clips for example. But where will all of those selfies go as data storage becomes more expensive?
By 2020, there will be 44 ZetaBytes of data in the world -- that comes to 44 trillion high quality photos. A lot of that will have been created by smart phone users capturing the higher quality images that the new phones allow them to take.
"4K video on a four minute recording takes 1.4 gigabytes of your memory and thereby with the sophistication of the smart phones, people will drive to take very good quality videos and pictures and takes a lot of capacity and for a lot of people who take a lot of these content need to manage the content. And for that, memory is a forever requirement for you to search your digital lifestyles," said Gavin Wu, vice president Sandisk Asia Pacific.
External storage devices are one solution. Push a flash memory card into your phone and it will hold up to 256 gigabytes of data, at a cost of about 1,000 yuan. With everyone wanting to be mobile however, the handiest solution is to store it in the cloud -- a server somewhere to which you can upload most of that extra content. Before uploading content to the cloud, however, you still have to store it on the device first.
"The easiest way to do that is to provide the storage in the cloud. Still, when we are creating contents-- we are making a video or taking pictures-- first, we have to store them on the device. The cloud is more of a backup. It's where you put your content to keep it safe," said Joe Kelly, vice president int'l media affairs, Huawei.
Most of China's cloud storage providers, companies like Sina and Tencent, have been providing cloud storage for free, but those free good old days are ending. A growing number of China's cloud storage providers are shutting down their clouds to consumer users, blaming increased government supervision of illegal or objectionable content uploaded in the past. A cloud technology expert says China's cloud projects are still struggling to find a workable business model.
"Some companies have not yet found a way to sustain their cloud services other than just providing basic storage. Many of them cannot justify what they are getting from the cloud in the light of how much they have invested," said Yang Fan, senior analyst Analsys.
Baidu's cloud storage is still available to the public, with 380 million active users. Beyond the 2 gigabytes of free storage it initially offers, however, any additional space will cost you up to 500 yuan per year. Apple's iCloud also charges users for anything beyond 5 gigabytes of cloud space, charges that range from 6 yuan a month for 50 gigabytes to 68 yuan per month for one Terabyte. Going mobile does cost, and these days it can cost more than just the price of the phone.
