A source with some success in the past has passed along that iCloud will have educational-tiered pricing, perhaps being free for students and teachers to a certain level or with the purchase of Apple products.
The tip makes sense for a few reasons. One, Apple’s Back to School promotions are said to be tied to WWDC – which is unusual. The tie-in could include Cloud offerings. In fact, it would be surprising if iCloud wasn’t somehow tied to Mac sales.
Example: Buy a Mac, get an iPod and two years of iCloud for free.
Also, Google’s Apps for education (Microsoft’s as well) are making a huge Cloud push in schools, a traditional stronghold of Apple. The offerings are free for acadamics. As Google starts to deploy Chromebooks to these students at $20/month, Apple needs to have a strong Cloud to Computer showing. Obviously Apple’s computers are strong, so too should its Cloud offering.
We’ll find out soon.
- Apple signs up all the music labels and even some movie studios, iTunes in the iCloud ready to iGo (9to5mac.com)
- Businessweek describes Apple’s iCloud music service (9to5mac.com)
- Economic Times: Apple likely to release Cloud service in June, announce at WWDC (9to5mac.com)
- Three down, one to go. Apple stikes deal with Sony for Cloud streaming (9to5mac.com)
- Apple doing back to school announcement at WWDC, offering $200 off iPads? (9to5mac.com)
- Official: Steve Jobs to unveil iCloud, iOS 5, and Lion June 6 at WWDC (9to5mac.com)
