There are rumours that the Apple's upcoming cloud-based service is probably expected to replace iTunes' syncing functionality.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has suggested in a post on Sunday that it is not good to think of iCloud as the new MobileMe rather than think of iCloud as the new iTunes. He has qualified the report by stating that it as "fourth-hand information, at best."

According to Gruber has stated that he is aware of some probable and "handful of minor features" for the announcement of iOS 5 and iCloud on Monday. He said that the news regarding this is well-kept secrets as any major projects from Apple in recent years.

iCloud would substitute iTunes as the central store for almost all data stored on iPhones, iPods and iPads, moving the information to the cloud as expected by Gruber. And for this reason iCloud could do away with USB tethering and syncing. It will allow users to have new iOS devices just by logging into an iTunes account.

On the other hand it is expected that such a service would affect not only MobileMe but also iTunes including MobileMe for overlapping on the data they keep.