After months of speculation, Apple?s plans to unveil its cloud-based storage service iCloud could affect not only the digital music industry but digital content as a whole.

The initial focus for iCloud is likely to include music storage. However, industry experts agree that it is likely Apple is eyeing a broad array of digital content, including photos, television and video.

?Whatever it is, it is likely that it will be somewhat more significant than some of the other efforts we?ve seen,? said Michael Gartenberg, analyst at Gartner, Stamford, CT. ?It doesn?t seem that Apple would just introduce another music storage locker without including some other value add or a way to disrupt or move the industry forward.?

Cupertino, CA-based Apple will unveil iCloud at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2011 during CEO Steve Jobs? keynote today. The company will also introduce iOS 5, the next version of its mobile operating system, the announcement of which was itself a departure from previous practices.

While no details about iCloud were available prior to today, it is widely assumed to be, at the very least, a digital music storage service, given Apple?s strength in music with the iPod and iTunes.

?It?s very different for someone like Google or Amazon to take this cloud-based approach because they are trying to take market share away from Apple,? said Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, MA. ?Apple is the dominant player in digital music.?

Apple did not respond to a request for comment by press deadline.

Content legacy
Music is also the focus of the cloud-based storage offering from Google, Music Beta, which allows users to store and stream their favorite music to the PC or mobile Android device. Amazon?s Cloud Player is a similar service.

However, Apple already has deals in place with the four major U.S. record companies ? Universal Music Group, EMI, Warner Music and Sony ? while the other two do not. Which means iCloud will be a strong contender out of the gate.

The play also strengthens Apple?s position in mobile overall. It is already a key player in several categories of mobile devices with the iPhone, iPod and iPad.

?Apple is in a very good position,? said Neil Strother, Kirkland, WA-based practice director of mobile marketing strategies and mobile services at ABI Research. ?It has a legacy of content and devices that users seem to like.

?By putting out a cloud service, it puts them in first place.? Mr. Strother said.

However, it does not knock Google or Amazon out of the game.

?They are willing to play in the space and have reason to have some confidence,? he said. ?It depends on who has the better system.?

Consumer needs
Music is also a good starting point from a consumer perspective.

?From a business-to-consumer cloud computing perspective, music is one of the natural content areas that would be important and people would care about,? Mr. Strother said.

ICloud will conceivably enable consumers to buy a song from iTunes, store it in iCloud and then be able to log into the service wherever they are and access content across multiple screens.

However, Apple?s goals for iCloud are likely to extend beyond music.

?I think we should expect that what Apple has planned is about much more than just music,? Forrester's Mr. Golvin said. ?The vision is likely to be to take this idea of music in the cloud together with backup, remote access to documents and expand beyond that.?

Mr. Golvin points to Apple?s MobileMe service, which has a content aspect, and the fact that iTunes offers content other than music as well as the iBooks application as evidence that Apple has interests in digital content beyond music.

The type of content that a cloud-based storage system could encompass includes gaming, photos, TV, video and documents.

?It?s not iMusic, it?s iCloud,? Mr. Golvin said. ?It?s all of your content and some social connections for sharing media.?

The move makes sense because consumers are increasingly looking to have access to their content wherever they are via a connected device.

?Apple recognizes that this is the way consumers want to go and this solution is to protect its consumer base,? Mr. Golvin said.

However, given how quickly consumers? media consumption habits have been changing in the past decade, there is no guarantee that the fairly new cloud-based access will be the dominant method going forward.

?The big three are assuming that consumers will adopt this, but it hasn?t been proven out yet,? ABI's Mr. Strother said. ?Is this the way that consumers want to access content?? 

Final Take
Chantal Tode, Mobile Marketer