I was speaking to a friend the other day about how things were going at my company.  He was surprised to learn that our business of white-label personal clouds for mobile providers has never been better.

"Haven't device personal clouds just taken over -- why would anyone use a personal cloud that is not just built into their phone and automatically activated?"

It's a question we've heard before. He was referring to iPhones and iPads with built-in iCloud, Android devices with Google cloud services, and Windows Phones with SkyDrive.

I replied that for most mobile users, they are still unaware of personal clouds or even if they are, they only vaguely understand their capabilities. For example, when I ask most iPhone users if they use iCloud, the most common response is, "Isn't it just built into my phone? I think I use it. It's for backup, right?"

'Device-centric' personal cloud services have yet to be embraced en masse by mass market users. A major reason is that the services generally run in the background and lack an engaging user interface that makes them fun or compelling. If you consider why most consumers use their phones, it's for communication and entertainment. Without a compelling personal cloud app, why use it?

New personal cloud services are changing this. They do offer slick (or 'sick') mobile and web apps with user interfaces that provide important benefits besides backup. For example, many people still wonder what to do with all of the pictures and videos they take on their phone i.e. how do they get them off or share them. Many people still just send the occasional photo via text or email, or post them on Facebook, but as smartphones supplant digital cameras, this manual transfer becomes onerous. Another example is that as people use multiple devices, such as a phone, laptop and/or tablet, it becomes much more difficult to keep them in sync and to access desired content across devices.

These needs in combination with better mobile apps will change the perception of personal cloud services as being only for backup. That's why there's ample room for innovative personal cloud services that offer engaging user experiences and that support multiple brands and silos of mobile devices.

As one example, our company just released a new version of our OneMediaHub app for iOS. It adds support for syncing documents and calendars on iPhones, iPads and iPod touches with the cloud, in addition to syncing contacts, pictures and videos. It shows a timeline view of one's pictures, videos and documents in the cloud, and makes it easy to keep contacts and calendars in sync with systems such as Outlook and Gmail. OneMediaHub also runs on Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows PCs and Macs. It is free to check out from app stores or at http://onemediahub.com.