For digital pack rats, life is problematic these days. Armed with high-speed connections and digital music players, cameras and camcorders, they are filling their computer hard drives faster than ever.
Buying more disk storage is an option, but a growing number of people are instead choosing to deposit files in an online bank, thereby helping to inject life into the niche Internet storage market that, some analysts said, is on the brink of a growth surge.
"This is definitely a growing market," said Stephanie Balaouras, an analyst with the Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm. "People's storage requirements are going through the roof, the nature of the information we're gathering and sharing now is richer than ever, and sharing it over e-mail just isn't cutting it."
If the market does grow, it will be a sweet validation for companies like Xdrive and Streamload, which were decidedly ahead of the curve when they offered such services in the late 1990s. To collect their rewards, however, they will have to withstand new competition from firms like America Online (AOL).
AOL last month began testing a service called "My Storage," which allows subscribers to upload 100 megabytes of files to AOL's servers, and access that information from any computer with an Internet connection. The service is similar to other data storage offerings, in that users simply click and drag files onto a dedicated folder. When the computer is connected to the Web, the files are automatically uploaded to AOL.
E-mailing files to oneself is an increasingly popular technique for users to back up important files, especially with the advent of services like Google's Gmail, which offers 1 gigabyte of e-mail storage for free. But Gmail and other services limit the size of individual files that can be mailed.
Industry executives and analysts do not have a grasp on the size of the consumer market for digital storage. Apple has 500,000 subscribers to its .Mac service, which includes 250 megabytes of Internet storage for US$100 a year. Xdrive, of Santa Monica, California, said it had 35,000 subscribers who paid about US$10 month for 5 gigabytes of storage. Streamload, in San Diego, has about 20,000 subscribers who pay an average of US$10 a month for unlimited storage. Yahoo does not break out the number of subscribers for its service.
Streamload earlier this month began offering 10 gigabytes of storage for free, but with strings attached -- users can only download 100 megabytes of data a month, which is enough for about 25 MP3 files. Steve Iverson, Streamload's chief executive, said storage was inexpensive but transmitting files was not.
"It costs us money every time we send files to people over the Internet," he said. "So we're hoping this is enough to motivate people to sign up to the paid service."
Brett O'Brien, the chief executive of Xdrive, said he had seen "an amazing acceleration" in the number of users and the amounts they were storing in the last six months.
"People have more files, bigger media files they're accessing from different computers, and a lot of them have fast connections now, so they're looking for services like this," he said.
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
RSS