Wyse PocketCloud hits emerging mobile cloud mkt

NEW YORK, USA: US-based Wyse Technology has rolled out a new version of its PocketCloud application, enabling free sharing of music and videos between consumers' mobile devices.

Instead of saving content on far-away servers and then downloading it every time across mobile telecom networks when it is used, PocketCloud links devices with each other.

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Research firm Juniper expects the annual consumer market for remote, or cloud, mobile services to grow to $6.5 billion by 2016 as technology industry heavyweights Amazon, Google and Apple boost their presence.

Juniper expects music and video storage or acquisition services such as Amazon's Cloud Drive and the forthcoming Apple iCloud to gain rapid traction with substantial adoption on phones and tablets.

The new mobile cloud services will further increase pressure on already-strained wireless networks as telecom operators are struggling to keep up with surging data growth.

"Networks are going to crumble under the pressure of serving cloud based content. We are going to see a lot more peer-to-peer services such as this being implemented to overcome capacity issues," said Ben Wood, head of research at British consultancy CCS Insight.

Wyse -- whose core business is selling services to corporations -- is moving early in the consumer market with its network-friendly approach, and pricing the service at $1.00 a month, while comparable services cost well above $100 a year.

"There is a great opportunity," said David Nagy, director of product marketing for Wyse's mobile cloud business unit. "We don't have a data centre and we have a relatively small team."

Wyse launched the new personal cloud offering for Apple devices on Wednesday, but it plans to further expand it to devices using Google's Android software.