I wonder what features Dropbox can offer that won't inevitably be surpassed by Google Drive, iCloud Drive, and OneDrive.
To me, their main strength seems to be that they have the best cross-platform UI/UX right now, but even that may not be the case for long.
Maybe they could evolve/branch into a general-purpose file hosting service, where people can use it to publicly share images (like imgur) and music (like Soundcloud) with the appropriate UI for each case (or spinoff site, e.g. Imagebox and Musicbox) except people would just need one account to comment/vote on everything. Who knows, maybe they can even become an alternative to YouTube..
Let independent developers publish their games and apps from there, bypassing Steam and the other app stores, optionally charging a fee per user, with Dropbox taking a cut.
Maybe even offer a chatroom/messaging system, to compete with Slack/Skype etc.
The long term game for Dropbox is in having businesses outsource storage to them. While consumer cloud storage is a tough market (due to it being a race to the bottom), the vision of getting businesses of all sizes to replace their legacy file servers with Dropbox sounds very compelling.
You can already see Dropbox has transitioned its focus to businesses. Mailbox and Carousel shut down.
That is because a single consumer can easily switch to another service based on price alone and can afford to spend his/her own time on figuring out how to migrate their files.
On the other hand, once you have 100 business users which got used to Dropbox, switching to another solution has a real cost for your business. That's why Dropbox is focusing on businesses: they are stickier in the long run.
However, Dropbox will still maintain a strong consumer presence because familiarity is one of the key points for selling Dropbox to businesses. Moreover, every business starts small and every founder is a consumer at heart.
The promise of Dropbox for businesses is in outsourcing the complexity of storage in exchange for a monthly/yearly subscription. Consumer cloud storage is just a step in executing a bigger vision.
I can attest to this. I do some tech support for a growing construction company nearby, and I just tossed out their aging server. Moved all their data to Dropbox and set it up on the PM's laptops. Took me about a week of answering questions before they were all happy and smooth again.
Agreed. We had a SMB share on our network that had grown increasingly unused. Since there wasn't a business processes in place users organically started using Dropbox to communicate with clients.
Eventually they have you because then you realize that you have so much business information in them that you can't let employees walk out the door with.
”On the other hand, once you have 100 business users which got used to Dropbox, switching to another solution has a real cost for your business. That's why Dropbox is focusing on businesses: they are stickier in the long run.”
Great point! Hadn’t thought of it like that before.
Which is going to be a struggle due to businesses also shifting other things to cloud and other providers offer complete solutions whereas dropdox is a piece of a large puzzle.
this is where Box is king and they've pretty much been focused on businesses since the start. They've been inking partnerships with everyone from Microsoft to IBM to make their service king among corporate/enterprise users.
>The long term game for Dropbox is in having businesses outsource storage to them.
Is the business version somehow different? We simply don't all users to run Dropbox, because it eats up local disc space on our terminal servers, or desktops. Unless Dropbox starts working more like a local file server there's a ton of business that will never adopt it.
The default where Dropbox just sucks down files until you run out of disc space, and the on-disc-cache can't be shared between users, needs to change for Dropbox to be truly successful in business.
> I wonder what features Dropbox can offer that won't inevitably be surpassed by Google Drive, iCloud Drive, and OneDrive.
It's strange but it seems like others aren't trying hard enough or simply aren't interested in making a great product. My experience with dropbox has been better than with any other cloud backup service. For instance, I can move my cloud folder around without forcing a re-sync of the entire data. I can manually copy data to a new computer & it'll be magically sync'd without re-downloading everything. Dropbox also does a great job of incremental updates on binaries.
I think you're on to something. If I were them, I would be working furiously on killer features that the others can't duplicate for whatever reason instead of wasting time on email and pictures. Cross-platform support is a good example, but only applies to OneDrive and iCloud.
Some stuff that comes to mind (unfortunately other competitors have gotten a jumpstart on almost all of these):
- Self-hosted solutions (for enterprise).
- Privacy features.
- Push hard(er) for app integrations.
- I like your idea of hosting games / apps. Storage upgrades will then go from a nice-to-have to a must.
In the meantime, their competitors are doing the same thing. Seamless cloud integration for Google Office, MS Office, and iWorks is hard (impossible?) for Dropbox to replicate.
I heard similar predictions ever since Dropbox appeared. There was quite a fuss when Google Drive was launched that Dropbox can not possibly compete against the juggernaut with infinite resources and is doomed, but that was 4 years ago now..
Among those listed, Slack is the biggest existential threat (or complementary partner). The others can't even speak the language Dropbox's customers speak.
> their main strength seems to be that they have the best cross-platform UI/UX right now
and they will continue until Apple treats Android as a first-class platform, or Google treats Windows as one, or Microsoft figures out who they are anymore.
If you look at their business with a low-level standpoint, they will struggle to radically differentiate themselves from Google Drive, iCloud, Box and co in terms of features. But their business is not first based on features, but rather i) infrastructure and ii) execution. For infrastructure, given their growth and funding, they seem to be reaching the critical size that makes you a leader/key player in the market. If they keep combining competitive pricing and quality of support, the incentive for companies to switch will be meaningless. For execution, the fact that they are already CF positive demonstrates a strong ability to grow profitably = great execution. I don't say there will be no hurdles on the road, but they have pretty much all they need to avoid them
You're forgetting that Dropbox came into existence when all of those competing products already existed. They got turned down by a lot of VCs because the feel was that the space was already too crowded. But the founder had a vision and delivered a product that was actually superior enough that it attracted customers in flocks.
To me, their main strength seems to be that they have the best cross-platform UI/UX right now, but even that may not be the case for long.
Maybe they could evolve/branch into a general-purpose file hosting service, where people can use it to publicly share images (like imgur) and music (like Soundcloud) with the appropriate UI for each case (or spinoff site, e.g. Imagebox and Musicbox) except people would just need one account to comment/vote on everything. Who knows, maybe they can even become an alternative to YouTube..
Let independent developers publish their games and apps from there, bypassing Steam and the other app stores, optionally charging a fee per user, with Dropbox taking a cut.
Maybe even offer a chatroom/messaging system, to compete with Slack/Skype etc.