Technological advancements in the fields of cloud computing and electronic gadgets have led to the advent of the digital era. Increasing adoption of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices have boosted the growth of personal cloud market owing to increasing storage requirements. Several organizations have focused on improving productivity by developing a virtualized workplace using personal cloud storage solutions.
The internet and social media applications as well as emergence of multi-featured, affordable smartphone devices have led to the trend of storing and accessing personal data using personal cloud platforms. Improvised secure features and personalized data storage offer an exceptional user experience. This has resulted in the increased demand of personal cloud solutions among individuals and has created growth opportunities for developing customized solutions. Additionally, the growing trend of adopting Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) among organizations has helped in boosting the growth of the market.
Personal cloud solutions would continue to gain acceptance among individual users as well as business groups. Individual users would continue to dominate the market, constituting around three-fifths of total market revenue by 2020. However, the small business segment would exhibit the highest CAGR of 35% during 2015-2020, accounting for nearly one-fourth of overall market revenue by 2020.
Cost-effectiveness and easy availability of cloud solutions from service providers has increased their demand over user-hosted cloud storage devices. The provider-hosted cloud solutions segment would maintain its leading position, constituting nearly 75% of the market value by 2020. The user-hosted cloud solutions would exhibit a significant improvement in terms of market share, contributing nearly 25% of total market value by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 46% during the forecast period.
Numerous players are offering personal cloud solutions in various packages with attractive price limits. Direct revenue collected through monthly and annual charges would be the leading mode. However, the revenue generation through indirect modes such as advertisement and lead generation would surpass the revenue generated through the direct modes by 2019.
North America is the leading market for personal cloud solutions owing to increased awareness and growing tech-savvy population, followed by Europe. However, the growing trend of multi-device ownerships would fuel the adoption of personal cloud solutions among the Asian population and enable the APAC region to emerge as the leading market, contributing nearly 40% of the market revenue by 2020.
Key findings of the study:
• The world market for personal cloud solutions would exhibit significant growth due to ongoing need for faster, real-time access to data by individuals
• The revenue generated through advertising, lead generation and other indirect methods would exhibit potential prospects for growth
• Individuals would continue to lead the customers segment due to rapid rise in personal digital content along with increased adoption of camera-equipped and multimedia devices
• The Asia-Pacific region would witness increased demand of personal cloud solutions as compared to North America and Europe, owing to a significantly higher usage of multimedia devices coupled with the faster broadband networks
The established market players, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Dropbox, are leading the market with their flexible packages and affordable pricing structure. These players focus on offering personal cloud solutions with advanced features and attractive prices. The introduction of new security features, such as two-factor authentication, has also resulted in enhanced customer satisfaction. For instance, Dropbox added the two-factor authentication feature to strengthen the data security and cloud integration for shared folders on other platforms in June 2015.