Best way to transfer iphone contacts away from Exchange server

Question

The primary location for my contacts currently is with my company's Exchange server. I've sync'd with this since I got my first iPhone 3G in 2008. This is my last week with this company and I need to start using my contacts elsewhere.

I've exported a copy of my contacts using the OS X Addresses app as a backup.

Options that I can think of are:

• Starting to use my iCloud account (which I've never done before)
• Transfer to my gmail account -- but that'd get mixed in with a huge mess of less useful contacts
• Simply copy to use locally without an external syn. Is this possible? easy?

Are there other strategies that I should consider?

Answer 1

Since you indicated you didn't want to mix things and had an open account in iCloud which is not only free, but supported by Apple - I'd say you should start there and then ask us a more detailed question in followup if you run into any gotchas.