EMC Corp. (EMC) announced the general availability of Mozy mobile app for Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iOS-based devices such as iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, using iOS version 4.0 or later.
The application is also compatible with Google Inc.’s (GOOG) Android mobile operating systems based devices, for Android 2.0 or later.
Mozy provides online backup service to more than one million customers and 70,000 business users through its MozyHome and MozyPro applications.
Mozy mobile app allows existing MozyHome customers free access to their secured files remotely. The app helps the subscribers to send files as an email attachment, as well as opening and viewing of files in other applications (file types supported by the mobile platform).
The mobile app also allows users to preview photos as thumbnails and download and post photos to Facebook.
The U.S and Canadian users can exclusively download the application from the iTunes App store. The Android app will be available soon at the Android Market.
The company expects to offer a similar free of cost service to MozyPro customers in the future. A different version of the application using languages other than English is also expected to be released later.
Mozy was acquired by EMC Corp. in 2007 and was incorporated into Decho Corporation, a subsidiary of EMC Corp.
With the increasing adoption of cloud computing and higher smartphone usage, we believe this is a significant move from EMC, which will boost its mobile cloud computing customer base going forward.
The online backup market is a fiercely competitive, with numerous online backup providers vying for a slice. EMC’s Mozy faces strong competition from Carbonite, BackBlaze and CrashPlan. The latest cloud-based mobile offering will provide EMC a competitive edge, in our view.
Recommendation
We believe the increasing adoption of cloud-based technology will be a key growth driver for EMC. According to IDC, storage is the fastest-growing cloud service, with revenue expected to grow from $1.6 billion in 2009 to over $6.0 billion in 2013. Spending on public IT cloud services is expected to grow five times the IT industry rate in 2011, up 30% from 2010, as per IDC.
EMC, a leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions, has invested $40.0 million in the cloud infrastructure business and expects to grow from its cloud-computing initiatives. New products as well as cloud-computing initiatives are expected to drive revenue growth in 2011 and beyond.
However, EMC continues to face aggressive competition in the storage, networking and virtualization space from system vendors such as International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), NetApp Inc. (NTAP), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), Unisys Corp. (UIS) and Hitachi Data Systems.
Currently, EMC has a Zacks #3 Rank, which translates to a short-term Hold rating. We also maintain our long-term Neutral recommendation on the stock.
APPLE INC (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report
EMC CORP -MASS (EMC): Free Stock Analysis Report
GOOGLE INC-CL A (GOOG): Free Stock Analysis Report
HEWLETT PACKARD (HPQ): Free Stock Analysis Report
INTL BUS MACH (IBM): Free Stock Analysis Report
NETAPP INC (NTAP): Free Stock Analysis Report
UNISYS (UIS): Free Stock Analysis Report
Zacks Investment Research
