According to Gartner, by the end of 2013, consumer cloud services for accessing content will be integrated into 90 percent of all connected consumer devices.
Andrew Johnson, Managing Vice President, Gartner said that the emergence of personal clouds reflects the "4S experience", consumers' desire to store, synch, stream, and share their content on regardless of device or platform seamlessly.
Johnson added, "The shift to the personal cloud will accelerate rapidly in 2012 as consumers learn how to use new services on their devices. As cloud services become part of people's lives, device vendors and platform providers must integrate cloud services in order to win customers in 2012 or risk being displaces by those that offer these services. Brands must stretch across multiple devices, platforms and services.
He further added, "The notion of personal cloud is not new, the refinement and diversity of services for consumers is. Online backup and synchronization companies have been offering personal cloud for years. However, a big change has occurred during the past couple of years, with the growing adoption of mobile and portable devices that have limited internal storage and rely heavily on cloud services. What distinguishes the personal cloud from what came before is its ability to store, synchronize, stream and share as needed allowing consumer's greater flexibility in choosing devices and platforms."
Gartner estimates that consumers will spend approximately US$2.2 trillion on digital technology products and services in 2012, or about 10% of the average disposable household income. By 2015, consumers will spend some US$2.8 trillion worldwide on connected devices, the services that run them and content that is transferred through them.
However, according to Gartner, growth is not the only opportunity.
"Inside the spending envelope, market dynamics will collapse some markets while creating others that expand the captured revenue. Providers of consumer devices, services and content must anticipate the risk of sweeping changes to their business models. The personal cloud will force technology providers not only to rethink how they approach markets, but also, more importantly, how they define markets. 'Emerging' and 'mature' markets are no longer useful market segmentation," Johnson concluded.
However, traditional storage will not disappear overnight but will, however, be augmented by the consumer personal cloud. Gartner predicts that personal cloud will become widely adopted by 2015, but that in 2014 less than 10 percent of consumers will use cloud services as their main storage.
