According to reliable sources, Apple plans to increase the storage space of .Mac subscribers to as much as 1GB and could add new services during 2005.

The company is getting technically prepared to for this increase in storage by hiring new staff and increasing storage capacity in it's servers at the data centres. Apple is also ensuring that their systems can handle the increased demand for bandwidth.

Sources added the price would remain at $99 a year and that Apple will continue to offer a 50% rebate for the first year to any new Mac buyer. We could not determine when this storage increase will take place but sources say it will be sometime during 2005.

It's also been mentioned that new services would be added to .Mac but nothing specific was cited. One source only mentioned the possibility that Apple could add advanced support for Jabber IM network to .Mac accounts, but even this piece of information has yet to be confirmed.

Any additional information is welcome, we'll keep you informed of anything new.