RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky has published a report — as reported by “MacRumors” (http://www.macrumors.com) — sharing the results of a new survey of iPhone users that says 76% of surveyed users are planning to take advantage of Apple’s free iCloud services.
What’s more, the survey offers the first look at the popularity of iTunes Match, with 30% of respondents indicating that they are somewhat likely or very likely to utilize the $24.99-per-year service. iCloud is an upcoming set of free new cloud services that work with applications on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices. When anything changes on one of your devices, all of your devices are wirelessly updated almost instantly.
iTunes Match will be available this fall. It lets you store your entire collection on the icloud, including music you’ve ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes.
Abramsky thinks that Apple could see 150 million users on its free iCloud services with 60 million of those also participating in iTunes Match, a figure that would see Apple pulling in an extra US$1.5 billion per year in gross revenues. With Apple reportedly keeping 30% of iTunes Match revenue with the rest being passed on to music labels and publishers, Apple would see about $450 million in revenues from the program, notes “MacRumors.”
— Dennis Sellers