Tell me, do you understand what constitutes a 'cloud'?
Oh Sammich. I understand it perfectly. I have operated a large and well respected hosting provider for 6 years, and yes - we offer cloud services.
Here's the killer though.
A cloud, in the traditional sense consists of a large cluster of servers, distributed across multiple locations with excelent redundancy. Obviously this is not a requirement, but its generally accepted that a 'real cloud' is redundant.
Apple's is not. They currently operate iCloud from 1 physical location, with a small caching service for minor communications and authentication services.
In comparison, the likes of Google, Azure, Amazon, etc operate a globally distributed cloud platform. So if a datacenter is completely cut off, the system fails over to another location, and so on.
This also aids in reducing speed for international users. As it stands, my iOS device connects up to Apple's cloud in the states every few minutes. By comparison, an Android handset would be connecting up to the nearest Google datacenter in the UK. Thus reducing the load times and so on.
So yes. Apple do have a cloud. But not one that would be considered to be any form of superior alternative to their competitors clouds.
Interestingly Apple do seem to be aware of this. Their iTunes distribution network still runs through Akamai. In fact at times it does seem that a few iCloud connections have come in from Azure, especially with Mac OS X push notification, showing that Apple's own cloud network really is not up to scratch with the rest and they know it.
Last I checked, they were still using Azure for content storage, with Apple's own cloud simply being used to pull and load the content from Azure.
