Apple touts 85 million iCloud customers, sets service as strategy for next decade

Apple made their predictably astronomical financial statements tonight, but one tidbit in particular stuck out - their emphasis on iCloud and its 85 million customers. Specifically, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that iCloud isn't a product, it's their strategy for the next decade.

iCloud is still relatively new, having launched with iOS 5 last summer as a replacement of MobileMe. It's a bit more involved, and offers a lot more in terms of functionality, which you can see in our full iOS 5 walkthrough. It's interesting to hear Apple positioning the service as such a high priority, but  since they've pretty much owned the hardware game for the last couple of years, it's the next logical place to go. Having full-bodied services back them up will only serve to cement the iPhone and iPad as leading mobile devices.

Quick show of hands - how many of you actively use iCloud on a regular basis? How many of you sign up for it and forget you have it?

For the financial nitty-gritty of Apple's quarterly results, the PDF report for their Q1 2012 can be found here.

Simon Sage

Editor-at-very-large at Mobile Nations, gamer, giant.