Apple Details iCloud Pricing, Opens Beta Portal

Apple has quietly refreshed its iCloud information portal with pricing information for the forthcoming cloud storage service, with three options outside of the complimentary 5GB of storage for each iOS device owner. As previously stated during the initial announcement, the 5GB of complimentary storage does not count for music, apps, and books as well as photo stream access and only applies to contacts, documents, mail, Camera Roll metadata and app data.

Pricing for the increased storage starts at $20 a year for 10GB, $40 for 20GB and $55 for 50GB of storage, all on top of the 5GB of complimentary storage. In addition, Apple has opened the iCloud Beta portal with early access to the service for developers and others with MobileMe logins.

As expected the iCloud service allows for perpetual backup of purchases and documents using Wi-Fi. Apple will roll out iCloud along with the release of Apple iOS5 later this Fall. Apple has also added iWork functionality to iCloud based on early reports, but complete functionality has yet to be made available.