The other day, I was speaking with an executive at a mobile operator who had several million users about deploying their own branded personal cloud service.
His main question was, when we deploy a personal cloud service, what percent of customers are likely to use it. He was interested in understanding this given the competitive landscape such as Apple iCloud, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive and Dropbox who offer free personal cloud storage. Why would a mobile operator's subscriber use their personal cloud service versus one of these?
I asked him what was the best case scenario for any other service that they offered. His answer was voicemail in that it is automatically enabled as part of a customer's account and all customers need to do is set it up and start using it. Everyone knows what voicemail is and there is no learning curve. He said that about 80% of their customers used voicemail as it was a completely free service and automatically provisioned.
I mentioned that the potential for personal cloud services was to make it as ubiquitous as voicemail. From a user's perspective, it should be just like voicemail i.e. when they get a mobile number, there should be a personal cloud account automatically created and associated with it. Just like voicemail, there needs to be a password for the account. And just like voicemail, it should just be as intuitive to set up and use across any of one's mobile devices (but also computers). So if 80% of customers use voicemail, why can't 80% also use their personal cloud service? That is why most mobile users would use a personal cloud service from their operator rather than another.
Of course, voicemail and personal cloud services are very different. Voicemail is a must have for an operator, but as this point, it is not strategic, because every provider has one and there is practically no difference. Voicemail's value is diminishing as people have so many different ways to communicate.
Personal cloud services, on the other hand, are the next frontier. In our view, it is rapidly becoming as ubiquitous as voicemail. The drivers behind this are unstoppable, namely, people increasingly using more mobile devices and computers. 20% of the world's population has a smartphone and this is projected to grow quickly in the next few years. When this happens, more people than ever will connect to the internet and need a private and secure place for their digital life aka a personal cloud.
How would a mobile operator think about not having their own voicemail but instead making all of their customers use something like Google for it? Although some people do use Google for voicemail now, overall, this would be bad for operators as it would be one more reason why people need operators less. So as personal cloud services approach voicemail-like status, it is only a matter of time until all mobile operators provide one, otherwise, they could be one of the last ones without it.
This suggests that the window of opportunity for operators is closing fast. Personal clouds are significantly different than voicemail in several ways but perhaps most importantly, their whole point is to be a primary repository of one's digital life. Once people start using a digital locker, it is increasingly difficult to switch. To get someone to switch voicemail is no biggie. So it behooves operators to have a sense of urgency so they don't miss the opportunity to provide an important value added service that is becoming as ubiquitous as voicemail, so they can reap its attendant benefits.
