iOS 5 has finally arrived and with it comes the much anticipated updates including iCloud, Siri and more.  Steve Jobs called iCloud “the soul” of its upcoming operating system, and it’s everything Apple said it would be.

All eyes on iCloud

Jobs revealed the iCloud in June during Apple’s annual developers conference. It marked his last appearance in the conference, and his second to last public appearance before his departure on October 5th.

iCloud is available for free to iOS 5 and Lion users, and is inclusive of 5GB free online storage to store music, photo, app, and documents. Whether the content is purchased or created, the updates will be synced across devices, allowing users to access them with the same changes made using other devices. If you make changes to your content using the iPhone, the changes should be available to your iPad as well within seconds.

For bigger storage capacity, you can get 10GB more for $20, 20GB more for $40 and 50GB for $100, annually.

iCloud is Apple’s way of bracing itself from the growing competition against Google’s Android, whose existence they cannot simply ignore, especially when it’s taking big chunks from their market share. Analysts believe that iCloud is capable of shoring up Apple’s market to $500 billion, as it also sways hardware sales and all sorts of media to their favor.

But will the commercial offering be enough for the long term future of cloud services?  Apple has been a long-time leader in the personal media hub, and iCloud is an extension of the concepts first introduced through iTunes.  Apple has revolutionized media industries from music to film, publishing and photos, but it’s still a revolution that sticks pretty close to home base.

The proliferation of connected devices has kickstarted a major trend around consumer clouds, and it’s quite an opportunity for all sorts of services that appeal to the average user’s needs.  For Eye-Fi, having a focused service has enabled the photo management provider to transition into the connected devices era, tumbling onto the mobile scene with a rather confident approach to addressing consumer needs.  For CEO Yuval Koren, iCloud is a study in business and consumer behavior.

“It’s about broad versus focused,” Koren starts.  “iCloud may have a foot in a couple of camps but it’s still broad.  There’s so many things [Apple] is interested in, they put them all in one big bucket and consumers will look at that and determine what it’s good for.”

Koren then goes on to discuss the business opportunities for the iCloud, asking if it will be monetized in a direct or indirect fashion.  “iCloud is really riding on the existence of their devices and iTunes.  In contrast you see Eye-Fi’s premium offerings, all of which directly appeal to the consumer, saying ‘here’s a service and we’ll tell you the value’ instead of trying to hide it behind something else.”

Siri-ously mobile

Apple continues to be the leader in the mobile scene. iOS devices owns 43.1 percent share of the mobile OS market, and they’re credited to 58.6 percent of non-computer traffic in the US.  Yet several of the updates with iOS 5 and the new iPhone 4S play catchup to Android devices, especially at the native app level.  Siri is one of the more notable updates for the iPhone, enhancing the device in a highly integrated manner.  It’s an interactive feature that helps you better utilize your phone.

Siri’s also an important part of this ongoing software shift Apple’s undergoing, looking to some very specific instances in improving the mobile experience.  For those that have been working in this space, especially at the mobile level, Siri is a smart move on Apple’s part.

“We haven’t seen Siri yet, but we know our beta users are becoming huge fans of Speaktoit because we are very good at processing natural language,” says Speaktoit founder Gelfenbeyn.  “Being able to understand the true intent and context of a user’s natural speech is the only way this type of technology can work well.

“We also have taken many steps to make our product engaging and fun to use. For example, our users talk to avatars, which are an important part of the user experience – it is more unnatural to talk to a search string. Regardless, we applaud Apple’s move in this direction and hope that Android users try out Speaktoit.”