(The Hosting News) – According to Om Malk, senior writer for GigaOm, Apple may have paid four and a half million dollars to purchase the domain name “iCloud.com” from Xcerion. Xcerion used “icloud.com” to host its cloud-based storage system.

Xcerion recently changed its domain from “iCloud” to “CloudMe”, although icloud.com is still listed as property of Xcerion.

Analysts believe that Apple may have gone through with the move in preparation for launching a new media storage service that could host users’ music and videos.

When asked by TechCrunch if the domain purchase had occurred or was in the works, Xcerion neither admitted or denied it and stated, “We decided we needed a name change to better reflect our new focus on files and storage, where the desktop is just one of many clients to access files and content stored in CloudMe”.

The representative from Xcerion then went on to display the company’s new motto for CloudMe by stating, “If you have any files to share with me – Just CloudMe :)”.

There have been some signs that Apple has been getting more serious about cloud computing in the recent past.

Most recently, cloud-guru Kevin Timmons (who managed data centers for Microsoft) joined Apple. Timmons is expected to help Apple work on developing its cloud infrastructure. Apple’s new data centers are also expected to aid in the development.

Future cloud services by the company may also compete with Amazon’s cloud-based hosting services.

You can find more information on Xcerion’s rebranding of Icloud to CloudMe by visiting: http://www.cloudme.com/en

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