Uncategorized admin on 21 Mar 2008 12:45 am
Is fring the missing link for mobile online storage services?
Fraser MacInnes is a writer for the mobile phone blog Pocket Picks and it’s sister mobile gaming site Pocket Gamer. This week he asks: Is fring the missing link for mobile online storage services?
Mobile VoIP is riding a comfortable wave of increased consumer understanding and industry acceptance right now after a dramatic burst into the industry last year. It’s not like 2007 was the year that it all began, but it was arguably the year that the big carriers started to take real notice.
I like to think that wherever there is progress, there is an industry wing in danger of being supplanted or at least coerced into dramatically shifting its priorities, it’s all part of the ebb and flow of the techie industry. It’s intriguing then that fresh from ruffling feathers among carriers last year, mobile VoIP technology might have a hand in shaking up a new market space in 2008.
Maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, allow me to explain. The popularity of the iPhone and the subsequent N95 8GB revision are proof beyond reasonable doubt that there is a market for phones that can carry a considerable chunk of your data, be that music, videos or photos.
With mobile devices upping the ante in the connectivity stakes, and wifi/3G/HSDPA coverage becoming ever more ubiquitous, online storage solutions are looking like an increasingly attractive fit for an industry obsessed with miniaturizing its products.
Just last week I came across Jooce, a Luxemburg based venture offering unlimited online storage for a free sign-up. Perhaps even more pertinent is humyo, a free online storage service (though in this case limited to 30GB) that is already tuned to work with mobile phones.
But where on earth does mobile VoIP fit into all of this? Well, specifically in fring’s case, the implications of a handset that is essentially a portable limitless hard drive, along with free file transfer are pretty mind-boggling.
It could set a precedent for data sharing between mobiles that is scarcely enjoyed by PCs presently. Perhaps you are out and about and a friend sends you their latest holiday video to you via file transfer with fring. After you get over groaning at having being sent a bland badly shot memory intensive video of your friends sunning themselves in the Costa Del Sol, you decide that the polite thing to do would be to keep it.
The problem is, your handset’s memory is already at a stretch and though you have the space, it’s just not practical for you to clog up your memory card with such a large file. Uploading larger files like this to a service like humyo for downloading onto a PC or media player later would make a lot of sense in these situations and that’s just for starters.
The point, many might argue, of a portable device with large amounts of inbuilt storage is that you can have your data everywhere you go. That however might be somewhat shortsighted, surely the point of having your content hardwired to devices with such a focus on connectivity is so that you can share that content? There are of course all sorts of *boring* digital rights management issues to consider, but from where I am sitting, free mobile VoIP file transfer, like that offered by fring, could be the missing link in a chain that could see services like humyo and Jooce make big changes in how mobile data is stored and shared. Here’s hoping!