In a press release today, Apple set the agenda for its World Wide Developers Conference, set to start next week in San Francisco. In a bit of a surprise move, Apple said that its new cloud initiative would be part of the topics of discussion and that it would indeed be named iCloud.
We speculated at the end of April that iCloud was to be the name of Apple’s cloud service after it bought the domain name from Swedish cloud service XCerion for $4.5 million, according to Om Malik. iCloud.com is still redirecting to CloudMe, what XCerion rebranded iCloud ahead of Apple’s domain purchase. The question becomes now: what is this iCloud going to look like?
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Many have speculated that iCloud will be a music streaming service or locker, like Amazon’s Cloud Drive or Google Music Beta. Apple has a shiny, brand new $1 billion data center in North Carolina and an aging storage service in MobileMe that could use a revamp and rebrand.
Apple said iCloud, among other topics, would be discussed at the keynote on June 6: “Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.”
The updates to Max OS X and iOS 5 do not come as surprises and are generally mainstays of WWDC keynotes. Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself will be delivering the keynote at Moscone West next Monday, according to Endadget.
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