Introducing SkyDrive for iPhone and Windows Phone
SkyDrive is your personal cloud for your documents, notes, photos and videos. Move your files into SkyDrive and immediately they're available from any web browser anywhere in the world. As we detailed a few days ago …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has been rebuilding SkyDrive all year: the HTML5 rewrite of the web client landed in June 2011, followed by a November design post laying out the ambition of personal cloud storage for billions of people. Today's iPhone and Windows Phone apps are the first step of that vision off the browser and into native mobile clients.
The notable choice is platform order: Microsoft shipped for Apple's iPhone at launch, giving every iPhone user 25 GB of free storage — a point Business Insider led with in its pickup — rather than treating mobile cloud access as a Windows Phone exclusive.
First-order effects
- iPhone owners gain a native way to reach documents, notes, photos and videos stored in SkyDrive from anywhere, with no payment required for the 25 GB tier.
- Windows Phone closes a gap against iOS on its own platform: the flagship Microsoft cloud service now has first-party mobile clients on both handsets it matters to.
Second-order effects
- Cross-platform distribution puts SkyDrive in direct competition with paid storage rivals on their strongest device base, pressuring Dropbox and Google to defend the free tier that anchors their funnels.
- For Windows Phone, SkyDrive's presence on iPhone becomes a selling argument — your files follow you if you switch — turning a rival-platform app into retention infrastructure for Microsoft's own ecosystem.
Third-order effects
- If Microsoft keeps extending SkyDrive beyond its own platforms, consumer cloud storage consolidates around a few cross-platform accounts where the lock-in is the data, not the device — making client breadth, not OS allegiance, the competitive axis.
- The pattern also signals how Microsoft intends to compete post-PC: ship services on competitors' hardware first, and let the services carry the brand where Windows can't.
The trend: Consumer cloud storage is becoming a platform-neutral utility, with Microsoft, Apple, Google and Dropbox competing on free capacity and client reach across each other's devices.