Online Storage Service Face-off

Written by Luyi Chen on December 25, 2006
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Online storage services in ChinaOnline storage service has become a critical part of next generation web. In this post we take a look at six generic online storage services that either new or with significant market impact in China. They are 51files, Mofile, Gbaopan, Vdisk, 21disk, Ys168.

Different from services for specific type of medias like Flickr of photo and Youtube of video, generic online storage services is for any kind of media including document, photos, application, video and music etc.

Although sharing is necessary and available in any of these services, we put emphasis on permanent storage, because secure and reliable personal online backup is more important. Of course, this kind of service are usually not free.

We have made a comparing chart of these six services. You can also click the image to visit an online spreadsheet. We know we have missed out many other worth looking services in China, and we are going to update the chart in future when more data comes in. As for now, we intent to give you a brief concept of online storage service in China, including their user-base, price, storage quota and unique features.

Online storage services in China comparing chart by China Web2.0 Review

Among them, Shanghai Mofile no doubt is leading the market. As one of the earliest such kind of services in China, it has about 5 million registered users now, probably the largest market share. While its quota of permanent storage doesn’t stand out among these services, it has flexible and large temporary sharing quota. In June 2006, they rolled out video sharing service and has become one of the top players in this field within short time. Full featured service of storage, swapping and publishing makes it an ideal choice for general users.

Gbaopan is also a good choice, second to Mofile. Compared to other services, this one is relatively new. Launched in Sept. 2005, it has generated more buzz in web2.0 blogosphere mostly because of its group and tagging features. It provides 1G permanent storage to free users far better than the competitors. And its 10G premium storage is also cheaper than others. Recently it suffered a little bit from scaling. But as a whole, it’s definitely a company to watch in this market.

51files just launched several days ago. Currently it is using an aggressive marketing strategy, all free, unlimited storage, permanent storage for registered users. It provides a very simple service without any advanced features, but this also differentiate it from others and has become a good place for fast sharing of un-critical files. Although simple, but it’s well designed. Features like one click email sharing are really useful and slicker. While its all free marketing strategy makes sense in the beginning, it finally should find a sustainable model. Otherwise, it will disappear like any pioneers in this market. Of course user don’t expect to be taken away existing benefits.

The other three services all launched earlier than Mofile and have their unique focuses. Ys168 and 21disk all provides features attractive to enterprise users. 21disk’s content encryption, virus scanning, zip on-the-fly and a desktop style user interface make it an ideal service for corporate level collaboration. And Ys168’s high customizable user homepage is an easy way for file hosting and displaying purpose, probably a cheap landing place for some small enterprises without a website. In this reason, their prices are a bit higher than other services.

Vdisk which also has a large user-base provides the largest online quota with relatively cheap price. Its 50G premium services is the largest available service we have seen so far. And it is also planning to provide 10G temporary service for free in the future. This would be useful for large online file swapping.

Trends in online storage services

Barrier of language and user habits are relatively small in this market, so international competition is inevitable. Mofile and Gbaopan has been providing English services. And foreign services will easily join the battle with a simple Chinese interface.

We don’t include Netease and QQ in this review, since they are more like bonus services, but they have significant competitive advantage with their large user base.

Besides charging user for bandwidth and capacity, there’re other monetization approaches as well. That’s why we are looking at 51files.

Dion Hinchcliffe mentioned three problems of web2.0 services involving online storage: The trust issue, ability for user to specify their own preferred vendor of permanent online storage, standardization. One year later we still haven’t seen significant improvement in this direction. In our opinion, partnership and interoperation is a way that local online storage vendors can defend for their market share in face of international competitors.

Collaboration feature hasn’t been deeply touched in existing services. How about provide decent collaborative feature like Basecamp as well as secure permanent storage? And we are sure that users are willing to pay for that.

2 Responses to “Online Storage Service Face-off”

  1. Anonymous on December 25th, 2006 6:02 pm

    Online Storage Service Face-off…

    “China Web2.0 Review” has made a comparing chart of six Chinese online storage services. The six services compared are: 51files, Mofile, Gbaopan, Vdisk, 21disk and Ys168….

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