Amazon has released a dedicated mobile app that allows users to access documents saved in its Cloud Drive service. The move comes as the cloud storage market becomes increasingly crowded, dominated by players such as Google and Dropbox.
The Amazon Cloud Drive app, which is now available for iOS, Android and Kindle devices, lets users view all documents stored in their Amazon Cloud account and can be accessed anywhere you're logged in. It also works as a companion to the existing desktop cloud client.
The concept is similar to Dropbox, Google Drive and other services.
The app, first spotted by TechCrunch, represents a big change from the old way to access documents stored on Amazon's service. It used to work similar to iCloud, requiring users to open a different app depending on what you wanted to do; for example, you'd need a video app to watch videos and a photo-viewing app to access photos.
Now you can look at everything via the app as you would on a desktop's file browser with the Dropbox app.
If you're already heavily invested in another cloud storage service, there isn't a standout feature that will make you want to switch. But Amazon does have one big advantage: price. You can buy unlimited document storage for $60 a year and unlimited photo storage for $12 a year. If you purchase both, that's just $6 a month and you don't ever have to think about running out of storage.
It compares favorably to Google, Dropbox and Apple's iCloud plans. Google charges $100 a month for 10TB of storage, and Dropbox and Apple each charge $10 a month for 1TB.
It makes sense that Amazon is competitive in cloud storage. Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud computing arm, is where major companies like Netflix and Airbnb host their own databases.