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The global personal cloud market is expected to top almost $90 billion (£58.5bn) in revenue by 2020, according to the latest forecast by Allied Market Research.
The research firm anticipates a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.1% between 2015 and 2020, with growing customer awareness cited as boosting growth and personal cloud for individuals continuing to lead the market.
Individual users will comprise around 60% of total market revenue by 2020 according to Allied, however the SMB segment is expected to take nearly a quarter of revenue at a CAGR of 35% across five years. In terms of share between cloud providers and user-hosted solutions, provider-hosted personal cloud will constitute nearly 75% of the market value by 2020; yet user-hosted cloud is expected to grow at a CAGR of 46% to make up the remaining quarter.
Key growth drivers between now and 2020 include flexible packages, affordable pricing structures, as well as increased security features. Allied cites Dropbox’s addition of two factor authentication as part of this push. The company has also added the ISO/IEC 27018 privacy standard to its arsenal as of May, with Microsoft achieving certification back in February.
One interesting prediction the researchers make is through funding models; while subscriptions understandably remain the primary revenue generator for personal cloud services, Allied expects advertisement and lead generation to surpass this by 2019.
Increased uptake from the Asia Pacific region is expected to contribute significantly to overall growth, representing a greater market share than North America and Europe in six years. According to the Asia Cloud Computing Association’s 2014 cloud readiness index, Japan continues to lead the way, ahead of New Zealand and Australia. The report authors anticipate a ‘seismic data revolution once information access in Asia becomes universally cheap, powerful, and available’, aligning with Allied on there being a tipping point for Asia Pacific cloud usage.
You can read more about the report here (subscription required).