Apple names iCloud service with announcement to follow June 6 – but what will it contain?

Tech giant Apple has ended more than a year of speculation by confirming it will launch a web-based service called iCloud at its annual World Wide Developer’s Conference next week, along with new versions of the iOS and Mac OS software.

Apple’s decision to flag the new developments, rather than unveil them on the day as is usually the case, has led to hopes the company will reveal one of its biggest product revamps in years.

Apple made an announcement overnight pre-shadowing the WWDC keynote, saying it would “unveil its next generation software”.

“Lion, the eighth major release of the Mac OS X, iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering”.

Much has been speculated about iCloud, due in no small part to Apple’s construction of a multi-million dollar data centre in South Carolina the company says will power iTunes services. Until now, Apple has not confirmed any type of cloud offering.

But reports in publications such as the Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch show a streaming music service will be at the core of iCloud. Telsyte research director Foad Fadaghi believes this is what consumers will see when Apple reveals its secret new project on Tuesday morning, AEST.

“I think we’re going to see the first steps in commercialising streaming music services,” he says. “There have been services such as these in the past, like Spotify, but the fact Apple is moving into this market will spur it on.”

“It will be able to use its marketing power through all of its devices to put a face on this new product.”

More details about iCloud were explained in detail in the WSJ over the weekend. Apple’s negotiations with major music labels have come to a close, with Universal Music the only company left to sign – they are expected to do so this week.

The details of such negotiations have remained top secret, but insiders say their involvement will prevent users from having to upload several gigabytes’ worth of music from their home computers. Instead, they say, iCloud will scan a user’s iTunes library, and then make those songs automatically available for streaming over iOS.

“Apple has been able to leverage its existing relationships with the iTunes music store,” Fadaghi says. “They have been able to prove they can make money for the music labels, they are the main source of digital music content.”

“Being able to demonstrate to those labels they can make it work is a powerful thing”

This relationship with the music labels also provides a significant advantage over both Google and Amazon, both of which announced music locker services of their own in the past several weeks. Currently, users of Google and Amazon’s products need to manually upload music into a storage service – a task that can take weeks for some users.

And considering Australian internet users don’t have very high download limits, a potentially restrictive one.

But the potential for iCloud goes beyond so much more than just music locker services.

Analysts point out the iCloud service is being debuted at WWDC – where developers from across the world congregate to share their apps and are introduced to new technology. If Apple provides them with APIs for this cloud service, it could extend far beyond just sharing media wirelessly.

iCloud services could become part of third-party apps, which would allow developers to find new and interesting ways to utilise the service.

Indeed, reports suggest Steve Jobs himself is unhappy with the way Apple’s current cloud service – MobileMe – is panning out. According to an in-depth article in Fortune, he actually berated several executives face-to-face for the service’s troubled launch a few years ago, saying they had ruined the company’s reputation.

Apple is also set to debut iOS 5 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. In lieu of new hardware announcements – of which there are expected to be none – Apple will reportedly give the software a major remodification, perhaps the biggest since iOS and Mac OS X both launched.

TechCrunch predicts a revamp of the notifications system, and today even said that it is working with Twitter to integrate photo-sharing within the software itself. This comes after a separate report that states Twitter is developing its own photo-sharing system to claw back revenue from third-parties.

Widgets, a popular feature on the Android system, are also expected. This could mean iOS 5 may look and operate totally differently from the current version.

WWDC will kick off on Monday, June 6 in California, with a keynote to occur early Tuesday morning Australian time.