Microsoft announced its free, personal cloud storage service.
Formerly known as SkyDrive, OneDrive gives one place to store photos, videos and documents that is accessible on the devices.
OneDrive offers 7 GB of free storage — the equivalent of more than 7,000.
OneDrive features include improved video sharing and newly updated apps for Windows Phone, iOS, Android and Xbox.
Microsoft is giving the first 100,000 customers who access their OneDrive account after the launch an additional 100 GB of complimentary storage for one year.
A recent Microsoft-commissioned online study said at least 77 percent of cloud-familiar consumers have content stored on a device that is not backed up elsewhere, and 69 percent would rather lose the device itself than the content that’s stored on it.
New features that accompany the availability of OneDrive include automatic camera backup for Android — making it easier than ever for customers to get their photos from their Android phone to their other devices — and video transcoding — making videos as easy to store, view and share as photos.
OneDrive is free for customers up to the first 7 GB of storage; customers also have the option to purchase storage in 50GB, 100GB and 200GB increments.
Current customers will be able to use their existing SkyDrive credentials to access their files in OneDrive.
In addition, current customers who refer friends can receive up to 5 GB of free storage (in 500MB increments) for each friend who accepts an invitation to OneDrive. Customers can also receive 3 GB of free storage by utilizing the camera backup feature.
