Claimed 2TB iDisk upgrades spark iTunes in the cloud rumor-machine

How much storage do you need for Time Machine back-ups? Added to which, how much do you use for casual back-ups and your iTunes library? Perhaps a Terabyte or two?

Interesting then is a late night Cult of Mac report which suggests some MobileMe users are seeing their iDIsk storage capacity seemingly raised to 2TB. We’ve checked our own accounts and these still read 10GB, and the comments in Leander Kahney’s story suggest these 2TB storage explosions are isolated incidents, at best, that’s if they’re true at all....

Sure, you can already get up to 60GB of additional storage through MobileMe for a fee.  But what would a 2TB capacity through MobileMe mean to iDisk users? Quite a lot, we think. We can imagine Time Machine back-ups to your storage in the cloud, for example.

We’d like to think you could choose to store your iTunes library up there, too, making it available to all your devices - could this be a quiet dawn for that much speculated-upon iTunes in the cloud notion?

After all, we know Apple harnesses some big online plans, following its decision to build a huge $1 billion server farm in North Carolina.

What’s really set us thinking is the Cult of Mac report when read in conjunction with a second item on TechCrunch this morning. An opinion piece which describes the “inevitable move of iTunes” into the cloud.

In a well-argued piece, author, MG Siegler, points out that the data capacity demanded by movies and TV shows (and series) is huge, taking up valuable space on your Mac and forcing users into having to make back-up decisions. It’s a little clumsy.

Given too the move toward streaming music services, as evinced by Spotify, then could this iDisk move - if true - be Apple’s way to offer legitimate music owners a way to set up their very own personal streaming music service to access their own files, while perhaps bolstering that offering with its own fee-based streaming service?

Perhaps we’ll find out more tomorrow.

Also consider ABI Research data published in the last hour. The researchers claim, "The number of mobile cloud computing subscribers worldwide will grow rapidly over the next five years, rising from 42.8 million subscribers in 2008, (approximately 1.1 per cent of all mobile subscribers) to just over 998 million in 2014 (nearly 19 per cent)."

According to senior analyst Mark Beccue: "From 2008 through 2010, subscriber numbers will be driven by location-enabled services, particularly navigation and map applications. A total of 60 per cent of the mobile Cloud application subscribers worldwide will use an application enabled by location during these years."

Beccue concludes by reiterating his finding that "By 2014, mobile cloud computing will become the leading mobile application development and deployment strategy, displacing today's native and downloadable mobile applications."

Meanwhile, if you’re a 9to5Mac reader with a MobileMe account, why not take a second to check to see if you’ve been bestowed with a 2TB storage surprise. Let us know if you have, we’re interested.

And swing by tomorrow for our September 9th live event coverage, hopefully with a little video...