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According to Gartner, consumer cloud services for accessing content will be integrated into 90% of all connected consumer devices by the end of 2013.

 

Speaking at a briefing for technology industry executives in Singapore, Gartner managing vice president Andrew Johnson said that the emergence of personal clouds reflects consumers' desire to store, sync, stream, and share their content on regardless of device or platform seamlessly.

"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," said Johnson.

According to Gartner's definition, personal cloud allows consumers to seamlessly store, sync, stream and share using multiple connected devices such as smartphones, media tablets, televisions and PCs over the internet. Consumers have begun to adopt cloud-based services as part of their digital ecosystem, thanks to services such as Netflix, Google Apps, Amazon Music, Microsoft SkyDrive and Apple's iCloud.

 

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.

 

"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," said Johnson. "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."

 

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% of consumers will use cloud services as their main storage.