mobile cloud

The mobile cloud is Internet-based data, applications and related services accessed through smartphones, laptop computers, tablets and other portable devices.

Mobile cloud computing is differentiated from mobile computing in general because the devices run cloud-based Web apps rather than native apps. Users subscribe to cloud services and access remotely stored applications and their associated data over the Internet.

Typically, mobile devices run a mix of Web-based and native apps. However, the trend is increasingly toward the mobile cloud. According to ABI Research, the number of mobile cloud computing subscribers is expected to reach 998 million by 2014.