Apple is being sued due to its low free iCloud limit. The strongest argument in this complaint is that Apple only allows its own iCloud to be used for device backup. Apple currently only provides a 5 gigabyte free tier, which is not large enough to support backups.
Apple’s iCloud is a direct competitor to Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Microsoft also only provides 5GB, while Google offers a much larger 15 GB. These cloud services are used for many applications, from document sharing to email, calendars, and backups. 9 to 5 Mac says:
A newly-proposed class action lawsuit alleges that Apple has “marked up its iCloud prices to the point where the service is generating almost pure profit.” As reported first by Bloomberg Law, the plaintiffs accuse Apple of “rigging the competitive playing field” by only allowing iCloud to manage device backups and other storage needs.
“Apple device holders are given 5GB of free iCloud storage space, but as Apple’s iCloud revenues attest, most users find this insufficient for their storage needs and purchase a supplemental iCloud storage plan,” the lawsuit says.
Apple and other tech companies rely on these plans to generate monthly revenue from users. This is particularly important to Apple, whose sales are mostly in one time hardware that spike at times of newly released products. The lawsuit, however, has errors in it that could get it dismissed. Apple Insider says:
However, in trying to explain the margins Apple earns for each tier of storage it offers, the complaint mistakenly confuses the annual per-gigabyte cost to Apple for storage with the annual total cost for capacity at each tier.
For some reason, the document claims that Apple pays $1.86 per gigabyte per year for iCloud capacities from 5GB to 50GB, but then the per-gigabyte-per-year cost increases to $74.40 for between 200GB and 2TB.
As with all plans, the larger ones are cheaper per Gigabyte than the smaller ones. If the lawsuit progresses enough to be a threat, Apple could either up the free tier to 10 GB, or allow backups using other services. Apple has made an effort at publicizing that among the big providers, only it offers fully encrypted services that prevent authorities or malicious actors from viewing its content.
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