Amazon has announced the launch of its Cloud Drive service in Canada, letting local Web users upload and store their digital files on Amazon’s giant hard-drive in the sky, and access them via Cloud Drive for Windows and Mac, as well as other Web browsers and native mobile apps.
Rivaling popular cloud-based storage alternatives such as Dropbox and Google Drive, Amazon offers all users 5GB of free storage, with additional storage plans starting at CAD $10 a year for 20 GB. This is pretty much in line with the pricing for other countries.
“Millions of customers around the globe have already discovered the benefits of Amazon Cloud Drive to safely store and manage precious files like photos, videos and documents,” says Russell Dicker, Director of Amazon Cloud Drive. “We are proud to bring Amazon Cloud Drive to our customers in Canada.”
Cloud Drive for desktop lets users automatically sync their files and manage their digital content on Amazon Cloud from a folder on their computer. As for mobile, well, after launching on Android last year, Amazon recently released Cloud Drive Photos for iPhone, letting iOS users store and share images through Amazon Cloud Drive. This further cemented the company’s consumer-facing cloud efforts in the face of competition from the likes of Google and Apple.
More recently, Amazon started launching Cloud Drive in Europe late last year just as Kindle Fire was being made available, then it started rolling out in Japan ahead of its Kindle Fire launch in November too. Indeed, Amazon Cloud Drive typically exists in countries where the Kindle Fire also is available for sale, given that it makes it easier for owners to store and access key files and documents, as well as consume media via Amazon’s music and video services.
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Therefore, it seems likely that with the launch of Amazon Cloud Drive, this will also herald the launch of the Kindle Fire in the not-too-distant future, which has thus far been restricted to the US, Japan and a handful of European countries.
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