China's cloud storage market doubles

China's cloud storage services market is set to double each year over the next five years, reports ZDNet Asia.

Analyst firm Springboard Research claims Chinese cloud storage services will grow from $6.5 million in 2009, to reach $208.54 million in 2014.

This represents a five-year compound annual growth rate of 103%. The firm says this trend is fuelled by increased usage of cloud storage capacity, particularly by medium companies, as the price of storage drops.

Storage hardware manufacturers Iomega and Verbatim are driving USB 3.0 flashdrives offering up to 2TB capacities and speeds up to 4.8Gbps, states The Inquirer.

Iomega, part of storage giant EMC, is offering a portable hard drive with 500GB, 1TB and 2TB of storage with USB 3.0 transfer speeds.

However, it will take some time for current devices such as laptops with slower internal hard drives to cope with USB 3.0; which could hold back its use for a while.

Online storage and collaboration service Box.net is offering desktop synchronisation, which takes files based in the user's online storage account and transfers them to the local machine, says CNET News.

The application is limited to Microsoft Windows operating systems; however, the company notes it will be making it available for the Apple Mac.

Along with synchronising files, the desktop software can keep track of any changes, and send them to Box's news feed. This lets the user see if a file has been changed or commented on through Box's Web interface.