Data Piling Up as Memories
Can't Throw Them Away, So Finding Storage Is a Must
Plans Range from a Few Dollars to Tens of Dollars
"People Will Become Increasingly Trapped in Cloud Services"
Office worker Hwang (27) recently received a notification that his phone storage was running low. Since it had been almost two years since he changed his phone, the 256-gigabyte (GB) capacity was completely filled with photos, videos, and files. Hwang ultimately reluctantly subscribed to a personal cloud service and shares the storage space with a friend to save on subscription fees.
Kim (28) believes that photos are the only things left behind, so wherever he goes, he leaves many records such as photos and videos. For several years, he has frequently received storage shortage alerts and has been paying for cloud services. However, after a few months, another notification about insufficient storage appeared. Kim said, "I can't just change my phone every time this happens, and I can't stop subscribing to the cloud service because I'm worried that if I lose or damage my phone without saving the data, I might lose everything."
Securing storage space through personal cloud subscriptions has now become a daily routine. As the quality of everyday photos and videos improves and their file sizes increase, it has become difficult to store all data solely on phone storage, leading consumers who do not want to lose their memories to become dependent on cloud services.
In fact, the number of cloud service users has been steadily increasing. Naver MyBox surpassed 2 million paid users this year, and Google's 'Google One' exceeded 100 million paid users last year. According to market research firm Mordor Intelligence, the global personal cloud market is expected to grow from $33.2 billion (approximately 48 trillion KRW) this year to $71.4 billion (approximately 103 trillion KRW) by 2030.
Personal cloud service plans range from around 2,000 KRW to over 10,000 KRW per month. Prices vary depending on storage capacity, and plans with 2TB (terabytes) or more require paying tens of thousands of KRW monthly. Some platforms also offer services that allow users to share allocated storage with others.
The problem is that even with low-tier plans, the amount of data to be stored keeps increasing, forcing users to consider more expensive plans. Shin, a company employee in his 30s, said, "At first, I used the subscription because I could store more photos than on my phone for free, but at some point, the storage became insufficient to the point of being unmanageable, so I had no choice but to subscribe. About 3,000 KRW is deducted every month, but even that is not enough, so I am considering upgrading."
Experts believe that more people will continue to rely on cloud services in the future. Subscription economy expert Jeon Ho-gyeom, a professor at Seoul Venture Graduate School, said, "At first, it wasn't that expensive, so people naturally subscribed, but the storage inevitably increases. Since users cannot transfer already stored data elsewhere, they become locked into the cloud service." He added, "Cloud services are a typical example of forced subscription, and consumers need to make efforts to organize their files themselves to reduce dependence on the service."
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