Dropbox biggest problem: The absence of mobile strategy

Robust business expansion, adequate financing, and strong momentum of development, many people think that Dropbox is ready to become the 2014 another high-profile listed technology start-up company. But as time passes, the second half of the year is coming, and Dropbox's future seems even more uncertain.

Dropbox in the same year with fast and convenient document synchronization way, make people impressive. Its simple operation, clean interface, very high cost performance. But the advent of the mobile internet era, many people's main equipment from the computer to the mobile phone and tablet computer. Apple and Google's competing offerings are on the line, and a whole bunch of new startups are staring at a particular part of the Dropbox service behind Dropbox's butt.

In addition to the Dropbox has been in the acquisition, the competition appears to be quite weak. Not only Dropbox, almost all startups in the cloud storage sector have experienced the same pain. For cloud storage, Silicon Valley investors have retreated a bit.

Dropbox, a company that once had a simple and effective trump card, does not have a strong advantage in the mobile internet age. Like Facebook, where the IPO was prepared, Dropbox had a choice of survival or extinction: Open or closed ecosystems, and how to extend ecosystems to mobile devices.

Fortunately, Dropbox now business volume and user base, even if made the wrong choice will not die so fast. Dropbox will lose some of the average user, but still be able to occupy a lot of territory in the enterprise market. Perhaps this is not a bad ending, at least Dropbox when others are actively expanding the mobile market, the introduction of the Dropbox for Business, enhance the enterprise user-oriented file sharing and synergy functions.

Facebook's choice is open. Now Facebook can connect to a wide range of other sites and services, allow access to Facebook, allow access to share content, and open advertising platforms. But the most important bet for Facebook to continue its success in 2007 years is to shift the focus of development to the mobile platform.

Since the launch of the IPhone in 2007, smartphones have become increasingly powerful and portable efficiency tools that people cannot leave behind. Think of all the things you need to do every day, and there are almost no tasks that you can't do on smartphones (and, of course, tablets).

Facebook has developed mobile apps and has enhanced mobile service liquidity through advertising platforms. And Dropbox apparently in the mobile platform to become powerless.

The problem that Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox, was not one of his own, platform conversion, new platform user growth slump, become sluggish, which is almost all from the PC era to the mobile era of the common problems of conversion companies.

So Dropbox's important question to consider next: what kind of platform Dropbox should be. Simply become a super storage space? It's realistic and easy, but it makes little sense for Dropbox's revenue, so turning Dropbox into an open platform? The risk is also greater, Dropbox is a file storage platform, and other startups that are more specialized in cloud synergy will Dropbox the possibility of excluding the interest chain is also not small. Perhaps that is why Dropbox almost every year for nearly two years has been buying more than 10 of companies with conflicting business ventures.

"dropbox is a good product for users, and it's like an operating system extension. But Dropbox's function is still too simple. "picturelife, co-founder of the company, Nate Westheimer, said. Picturelife is a company that is similar to Dropbox's product features, but gathers different documentation content for startups. It can bring together photos of users uploading and sharing all the sites on the web, such as Flickr, Instagram, Facebook albums, and so on.

"People are willing to use our services because our services are like a smart photo album." Dropbox can't do it like we do, neither Apple nor Google, although Google's platform is already very open. 」

Cloud services such as Dropbox, Apple and Google are still centered on their own storage space and do not extend file storage and collection to other companies ' services.

This is not to say that Dropbox on this road to the end, after all, Dropbox did not like Apple as "soft and hard both", or like Google as omnipotent. Dropbox acquired the loom of the photo storage technology company and purchased the GTD logic of the mailbox application Mailbox. Recently the acquisition of Droptalk. We can see that there are more and more Dropbox in the ecological chain of cloud service.

Carousel's position in the app Store

and Dropbox in most acquisitions, maintain independent operation, shutdown, and the integration of the new services, the basic is included in the Dropbox of the ecology, through the core services to provide file storage, sharing and synergy functions. Dropbox has long occupied the top five locations of app Store efficiency applications, but has not been as popular with users as Facebook and Instagram.

Is it because people don't need file sharing? Picture sharing is much more popular than file storage applications. Naturally it is needless to say, but the need for users to "carry" files is not without. On a mobile platform, this file is a photo. And Dropbox in the photo-sharing of the short board, and not because of the acquisition of loom or the introduction of the carousel to get a lot of supplements.

Dropbox core applications in the app Store rankings

Mailbox is also the same, even by the major science and technology blog reported more than dozens of times, the popularity has always been compared with the application of impression notes.

Top: Mailbox in the app Store rankings: Mailbox in Google play

Competition will only be more intense. Apple also announced the latest ICloud Drive service program in the early morning of TUESDAY, with 99 cents a month to enjoy 20GB of unlimited browsing albums, most importantly Apple's WWDC, which no third party service can match.

Having said so many disadvantages, Dropbox's core business-file storage, sharing and synergy-remains one of the industry's leading businesses. But is the cloud storage recklessly IPO? Look at the predecessor Box, the situation is not optimistic.

Look at Dropbox did so many of the "closed-loop" measures we often mention, but the result is very little, perhaps open the platform, access to more third-party services, for Dropbox is a more realistic mobile era strategy.