Asus plans to unveil a new cloud computing “total solution” Â at the Computex trade show in Taiwan in June.
The company has been offering online storage and web-based game and entertainment services to computer and tablet customers for a while, but at a recent event Asus Chairman Jonney Shih said the company is working on something bigger.
That’s hardly surprising from a company that offers a range of products including desktop and notebook computers as well as Android tablets and phones. The company made a name for itself by virtually inventing the consumer netbook space a few years ago, and Asus was the first company to launch thin and light notebooks as part of Intel’s ultrabook platform.
In other words, Asus has an awful lot of products it would like to sell you — and keeping your files, apps, and other data synchronized between multiple devices would certainly be a key reason to buy your phone, tablet, and PC from the same company.
Apple rolled out its own iCloud service recently, allowing iOS users to synchronize their data across multiple devices — but even before iCloud, Apple’s ecosystem was more tightly controlled thanks to iTunes. While iTunes started out as a music manager, it’s evolved into a music, app, book, and movie store — and it’s the app that lets you sync your iPhone or iPad with a PC or Mac.
PC makers have tried to create similar ecosystems, but it’s a lot harder to do that when you’re using Windows and/or Android, operating systems that are controlled by Microsoft and Google, not Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, or Samsung.
Still, Acer announced its answer to iCloud earlier this year with the introduction of the AcerCloud service. It looks like Asus will be following suit in June.