Monday, December 13, 2010

Why MobileMe Wants to Be Free - BusinessWeek

Think different

While a year of MobileMe goes for as little as $50 on eBay (EBAY), Apple (AAPL) sells the service for $99 per year or $69 for the first year with the purchase of a Mac or qualifying iOS device. For that, the MobileMe subscriber gets such services as IMAP e-mail, data syncing, photo and website hosting, an interminably slow iDisk, a questionable Backup, and Find My iPhone. They also get 20 GB of storage and 200 GB of monthly bandwidth. There's also a MobileMe Family Pack for $149, providing more e-mail addresses, storage, and bandwidth.

In comparison, Google (GOOG) offers free e-mail, data syncing, photo hosting, along with a free office suite, and free Android device location. If you need more than a limited amount of storage, it's cheap. For $50 you get 200 GB, with less space available for less money. Microsoft (MSFT) provides 25 GB of storage, along with free e-mail and other similar services, all for free. See where this is going? Apparently Apple doesn't. Apple just recently introduced Find My iPhone for free, but it basically had to because of what the competition is offering.

Why MobileMe Wants to Be Free - BusinessWeek

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