By Alexandra Burlacu | Dec 21, 2012 09:32 AM EST
Cloud storage startup Bitcasa, which promises to bring unlimited storage to its users for just $10 per month, announced its first batch of mobile apps.
Bitcasa launched back in 2011 at TechCrunch Disrupt, and the startup is now ready to unleash its Android and Windows 8/RT apps into the wild. The apps for iOS and OS X are virtually complete as well, and are set to launch in early January.
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Up until now, Bitcasa users only had access to a Web-based HTML5 version of the cloud storage service on their phones. The new mobile apps employ Bitcasa's encrypted, proprietary, and soon-to-be-patented "Infinite Drive," a technology that faced some skepticism when the startup first launched.
From a user's point of view, this Infinite drive basically serves as a virtual external drive, which continues to grow as the user saves more data to it. Moreover, for extra security, everything is encrypted across the system, and not even the Bitcasa team can access that data, Tony Gauda, Bitcasa co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.
According to Gauda, the mobile apps will enable Bitcasa users to stream their music from the cloud, access their photos, or read documents from anywhere. The CEO further stressed that the mobile apps automatically organize these files for the user, regardless of the folder structure used to store them on their computer.
Users should not have to make efforts to manage and organize their files, said Gauda, "the same way they do not have to worry about storage capacity limits."
As an added bonus, the Bitcasa mobile apps also allow users to share any files or folders with others, regardless of whether the recipient is a Bitcasa user or not.
While Gauda did not offer any recent user data, he said the service is seeing "phenomenal growth," and Bitcasa now has "more data under its management than the Internet Archive," which currently houses over ten petabytes of data.
According to Gauda, Bitcasa is currently being used in 122 countries worldwide, and it has more international users than U.S.-based ones.
Bitcasa was founded by former Mastercard, VeriSign, and Mozy employees, and aims to offer unlimited storage paired with top-class security via client-side encryption. The startup raised $9 million in funding from Pelion Venture Partners, Horizon Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, CrunchFund, and Samsung Ventures when it launched back in Sept. 2011.
While Bitcasa has been offering desktop apps and a Chrome browser extension for a while now, mobile apps were missing from its product line-up. The new mobile apps announced Tuesday, Dec. 18, are now available for download from Bitcasa's Web site or from the Google Play store.
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