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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Should Sirius Worry About Amazon Cloud Drive Service


Amazon may have just beat Apple to the punch with it's Cloud Drive Storage Service, though Apple has been probably not too far behind. It seems that if we are all saving the same songs, video,and other data, wouldn't their be economies of scale to centralize this content and avoid the waste of replication. It turns our devices into receivers and requires constant access to the web, but it makes a ton of sense.

Should Apple be nervous; probably not. Consumers still like to own and the cost to access may be high. Sirius has little to worry about, too. "What does Cloud Drive mean to Sirius XM? Initially very little, but as consumers adopt the service, and combine it with smart phones connected to the dashboard, people will have access to a wealth of personalized playlists that they may begin to listen to instead of Sirius XM." Sirius has already had to contend with iPods and have survived quite well. Consumers don't want to purchase every song they want to listen to; Sirius and terrestrial radio allow listeners to enjoy without incremental purchase. And Sirius brings exclusive content that Amazon can not offer. "Cloud Drive does not offer live content, nor does it provide the depth of news, talk, and sports that Sirius XM does."

Cloud Drive Service will be the buzzword of this decade. DVR content should soon find its way in the clouds as opposed to individual set top boxes. And consumers will get more and more comfortable saving their personal pictures and data in the clouds instead of a hard drive. In our quest for easier mobility, remote access means constant availability whenever and wherever we are. And that is what makes Cloud Drive Service a winner.