Western Digital Announces WD Photos™

Western Digital announced WD Photos™ (photo), the newest release of its photo viewer app, which is now optimized for iPad™ and iPhone®4. Available as a free download from iTunes®, the WD Photos app provides remote access to photos stored on a WD network hard drive including My Book® World Edition™, My Book Live™ and WD ShareSpace™. The images are displayed in native iPad and iPhone resolution, and users can access up to 285,000 of their favorite photos anywhere they can access the Internet by simply copying their pictures into the "Shared Pictures" folder on their WD network hard drive. The WD Photos photo viewer app offers a variety of new features that allow users to stay connected to more of their digital photos, including:

• Pinch and zoom functionality so consumers can digitally zoom in on the displayed photo;
• Horizontal split view for iPad;
• Option to instantly post photos from the WD Photos app to users' Facebook® wall;
• New slideshow transitions including pan and zoom, page curl, and cube;
• Increased 5 GB capacity to support iPad's larger memory and higher resolution;
• iPad full screen support at 1024x768; and,
• iPhone HD/OS 3 & 4 support.

WD Photos photo viewer app, optimized for iPad and other leading Apple® mobile devices, fulfills the growing demand to view, store, and consolidate photos on the go. Although digital photo viewing is not new, our Consumer Storage Opportunities report found that, 68 percent of broadband households viewed digital photos at least monthly in 2009, compared to 59 percent in 2006.

Revenues from Network-Attached Storage to Exceed $4.4 Billion in 2014

DVRs and video downloads will push the storage needs of U.S. broadband households to almost one terabyte by 2014, creating a parallel rise in the market for file backup and storage solutions, according to international research firm Parks Associates.

Parks Associates’s new report Consumer Storage Opportunities finds almost 50% of households are performing regular backups, including external storage, flash drives, and online backup, up from only 35% in 2006.

This is a classic example where growth in one area is spurring another industry. As people accumulate more digital content, the prospect of losing that data becomes more ominous. Companies marketing network-attached storage (NAS) and home server devices should target high-use consumers such as videophiles and music enthusiasts and demonstrate the ease with which these products protect against loss of critical data.

The majority of consumers still use less-reliable media such as CDs, DVDs, and flash drives, but in the past four years, portable hard drives and direct- and networked-attached storage have become more popular. This trend will accelerate, fueled by growth in digital media and dropping storage costs. In particular, product revenues from NAS devices will nearly quadruple between 2010 and 2014.