A report from Gartner has indicated that the personal cloud will overshadow the PC as the main element of consumers’ digital lives by 2014.

The IT analysts claim the rapid growth in the usage of apps has led to this verdict, meaning a sea-change in how consumers stream, share and synchronise content providing more flexibility, user satisfaction and productivity with the cloud.

Michael Gartenberg, research director at Gartner and co-author of the report, said: “The personal cloud isn’t a single offering, but a reflection of consumers’ expectation that their content will flow seamlessly as the result of a combination of services that overlap the consumer, business and government domains.”

The report stated that, as no company has complete dominance of the field, “the stakes are high” – in essence, the competition will only improve the services currently available.

An example here is that, with the release of Google’s personal …