Microsoft kicked off its own "productivity war" in June last year by doubling its free OneDrive storage and offering competitive pricing and 1TB of space for Office 365 subscribers. That storage, part of a monthly or annual subscription, then transformed into unlimited space late last year as Microsoft aggressively targeted Dropbox and Google to win over consumers and their storage needs. It all won Microsoft lots of new OneDrive customers and a lot of praise. Now that the bait and switch plan has worked, Microsoft is changing the rules of the game.
Technology companies usually pick Apple events to silently drop bad news, but if there's not one available then as late in the day as possible is always a good alternative. Microsoft chose 10PM ET last night to drop some big news, in a blog post, about the future of its OneDrive cloud storage service. Starting early next year, all new and existing free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15GB to 5GB. Microsoft is also removing the 15GB camera roll storage bonus for using OneDrive on iOS, Android, or Windows Phone. If you need to store more than 5GB then you'll need to start paying.
It's clear Microsoft has miscalculated how much space OneDrive needs on average, and it's likely that the company isn't making its targets for switching users over to paid subscribers. Pushing the limits down will help. "These changes are needed to ensure that we can continue to deliver a collaborative, connected, and intelligent service," says Microsoft. The reality is more that Microsoft needs to start generating revenue from its consumer cloud activities and stop giving away thousands of GBs of storage. It was good to entice people in, but now it's time to pay. Microsoft really wants consumers to just opt for Office 365 subscriptions with OneDrive storage and Office software.
Read more : http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9663878/microsoft-onedrive-free-storage-changes-cloud-first
Technology companies usually pick Apple events to silently drop bad news, but if there's not one available then as late in the day as possible is always a good alternative. Microsoft chose 10PM ET last night to drop some big news, in a blog post, about the future of its OneDrive cloud storage service. Starting early next year, all new and existing free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15GB to 5GB. Microsoft is also removing the 15GB camera roll storage bonus for using OneDrive on iOS, Android, or Windows Phone. If you need to store more than 5GB then you'll need to start paying.
It's clear Microsoft has miscalculated how much space OneDrive needs on average, and it's likely that the company isn't making its targets for switching users over to paid subscribers. Pushing the limits down will help. "These changes are needed to ensure that we can continue to deliver a collaborative, connected, and intelligent service," says Microsoft. The reality is more that Microsoft needs to start generating revenue from its consumer cloud activities and stop giving away thousands of GBs of storage. It was good to entice people in, but now it's time to pay. Microsoft really wants consumers to just opt for Office 365 subscriptions with OneDrive storage and Office software.
Read more : http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9663878/microsoft-onedrive-free-storage-changes-cloud-first
No comments:
Post a Comment