AppleInsider Staff
Answering the call of power users — and avid iPhone photographers — Apple on Tuesday expanded its iCloud storage options to include a 2-terabyte tier priced at $19.99 per month.
Apple quietly introduced the new tier as part of an update to its iCloud storage support webpage. As of this writing, the upgrade is live in all North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific regions where iCloud is already available.
With the 2TB option in play, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and PC users can now choose from four Apple-managed cloud storage capacities: 50GB, 200GB and 1TB. The default allotment granted when signing up for iCloud remains unchanged at 5GB.
Pricing for the 2TB tier comes in at $19.99 per month and Apple is keeping existing plans unchanged at 99 cents a month for 50GB, $2.99 a month for 200GB and $9.99 a month for 1TB.
Apple last updated iCloud pricing almost a year ago when the company nixed a 500GB option and scaled back monthly pricing for its two top tiers. Prior to September 2015, customers subscribed to the 200GB plan paid $3.99 per month, while those opting for a 1TB package paid a monthly fee of $19.99.
Today's expansion comes as Apple builds out a growing online services business, of which iCloud storage is a small part. During Apple's most recent quarterly earnings conference call, CEO Tim Cook said he expects services to generate revenue equivalent to that of a Fortune 500 company by 2017. The sector, which includes iTunes, iCloud, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple Care and the various App Stores, brought in a record $6 billion for the June quarter, up 19 percent year over year.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
28 Comments
I would like to see an annual discounted rate for the iCloud Storage.
Interesting that there is no discounted rate for the 2TB plan. It's just double the cost of the 1TB plan. Every other plan gets cheaper per GB as you move to the next level. With Apple debuting this ahead of next weeks keynote hopefully that means they already have plenty up their sleeves to talk about next week.
Until they allow sharing file links for downloading to non-cloud users, there's no point at all. And Dropbox prices are still better.
At the very least the storage size listed on the box of the largest registered iOS device you have should be free. 5 GB for free is greedy. Apple does want to keep people using iPhone right? By allowing them to backup seedless you for free it means they are far less likely to go to another platform and have confidence all their photos are things are safe. That's a selling point: we worry about that stuff. What a customer pays for should be Mac backup of large sizes.