(Page 2 of 2)
Competitive Watch
Dropbox may face more competition with BitTorrent Sync on the way, but likely sees no cause for immediate worry. Last November, the Dropbox founder and CEO, David Houston boasted that subscriptions had quadrupled to 100 million users in the past year, or 20 percent of the world's estimated cloud storage subscriptions.
Microsoft is also poised to see a boost in its SkyDrive service since it is integrated into the Windows 8 operating system, giving it an advantage over Dropbox, BitTorrent and others. Apple, too, has cloud integration  in its products with iDrive.
Billions of Users Served
A report by IHS iSuppli's Mobile and Wireless Communications Service in November estimated that the potential for cloud storage is, well, sky high, expected to reach a half-billion users last year, and 1.3 billion customers by 2017. Most services begin with a freemium model, encouraging people to hoard data and media and then begin to charge for larger volumes.
BitTorrent does not currently charge for its services but has received venture capital from investors like Accel Partners, DCM and Dag Ventures. The hope is to someday profit from the installed base through ads, third-party software bundling or promotions (similar to Twitter's model). The company also takes donations.
BitTorrent's two main products are the original BitTorrent P2P file-sharing software and uTorrent, a lightweight client for Windows or Mac.
|
