Dropbox - Question 6 - futur competition

I am a very proud user of Dropbox, which was introduced to me by a friend a year ago. I didn't bother to open the account thinking that it was spam, but after reading about the program in a HBS case, I decided to activate my account. I found out that through the referral program, my friend who introduced me to Dropbox got an additional 250mb of account space. Not only that, because I signed up through someone else, I also received 250mb for a total of 2.5gb storage space. This is a very novel rewards system where each user can do certain steps to acquire up to 8gb of maximum space, and I became very eager to introduce my friends and family to the account in order to reach the final goal. By waving the carrot in front of the donkey, many people like me will be willing to spread the word about dropbox, and the company does not need to spend 1000-2000USD through adwords to get an account activation per user.

Referrals are not the only method of gaining greater space. Users can also link their device to a phone and install on another desktop, and following the steps becomes a fun game in pursuit of 8gb. While I am still not there yet, I have yet to find this interactive "quest" feature for other programs, and it gives me good incentive to reach out to others. Since I feel the product is a superb one, there is no reason for me guilty about recruiting new users. In fact, I feel that I am doing them a great service by introducing Dropbox. This good samaritan mentality no doubt drives a lot of Dropbox users to do the same.

r99725051 wrote:Dropbox is a very competitive one in cloud storage market.It has first mover advantage, has simple interface, easy to use.
Dropbox doesn't has threatened competitor right now, they don't need to improve or making a big change. I think they just need to maintain its quality, make sure no data loss, no hacking or any security issue, then it's good enough.

I son't really agree on your last point. It ain't because Dropbox doesn't have serious competitor SO FAR, that it should remain just the way it is. Of course, it has to keep the same level of quality (easy to use) and security. The IT market changes so fast though, that to keep its first mover advantage the company still has to innovate and always improves its offer. Of course, so far we (consumers) don't know yet what innovation we might expect, but this is because we are on the IT market. As a consumer I don't know what I am expecting, but as soon as it will be created, I will think "of course I need it, how could I live without it" (like I do now for iPod or laptop). In such a fast growing and changing market, I think it is never "good enough".

Dropbox is a very competitive one in cloud storage market.It has first mover advantage, has simple interface, easy to use.
Dropbox doesn't has threatened competitor right now, they don't need to improve or making a big change. I think they just need to maintain its quality, make sure no data loss, no hacking or any security issue, then it's good enough.

I've just discovered Dropbox thanks to the case and I don't think I am going to switch to other competitors in a near future. The software is user-friendly and according to its growing pace, its about to sustain soundly and will be continually improved. As a beginner in this kind of software, i'll just share groupwork files but no personnal data as I am a bit paranoid about the security standards of the freemium account.

In my opinion I liked Dropbox from the first moment and I do not want to switch. For example I am also using Google docs but we alreday did some group projects and used therefore dropbox and it worked perfect. I am also thinking about to uprade myself to premium member but at the moment I do not do it because I have some security issues concerning data security.

In addition to that you have to say that from my experience Dropbox has similar adavantage like Facebook, the server is never down! The result of that fact is a high customer satisfaction and this reduces shifting to other companies.

For the foreseeable future, I also see myself using Dropbox, not somehting else. Just because it is already installed on all the devices I am using and I am relying on it heavily to share all kind of data with my business partner and my family.

I do not have any complaints about Dropbox as it is and am not close to the storage limit on Dropbox, so I do not see any reason to change.

I was not aware of Sugarsync as well. As I mentioned on the another board, I keep using dropbox just because I already have it and have no complaints so far. But when I can't satisfy with it by any reasons in the future, I may look for new service. After knowing sugarsync, how many dropbox users want to change immediately? If not, what is the reason for keep using dropbox? I'm just curious.....

As for future competitions, I just thought if some other similar service will be pre-intalled in new devices, I won't dare to download dropbox at that time. Perhaps this is more thread than competition.

Elwin Jongeling wrote:I'm surprised nobody has mentioned SugarSync yet. It is a current competitor of Dropbox which is better in a lot of ways. Most notably, it provides more free space and can share and sync any folder on your computer so you do not have to change your folder structure on your computer just for Dropbox. Like Dropbox, there is software for Windows, OSX, iOS, android etc. and syncing works the same. SugarSync can do exactly the same as Dropbox, but more. SugarSync's website is more positioned towards paying, corporate costumers instead of people using the free service. If you go to the download page of SugarSync, the free account is hidden all the way at the bottom.
The reason Dropbox is so much more successful than SugarSync, which is approximately as old as Dropbox, is probably that Dropbox is much more well known because of its referral system. Now that more people use Dropbox, it is much easier to share your folders through Dropbox because people will probably not want to install two separate pieces of software for the same service.

Dropbox has already implemented a really innovative way of trying to improve through Votebox. This is a system where users can suggest new features to be added to Dropbox, after which people can vote for these suggestions. This, however, would work much better if Dropbox would actually listen better to what their users want. The top suggestion (almost 150.000 votes) is now over 2 years old, the same age as the Votebox system itself.

Thank you elwin for this nice post and this realy nice analyse of this concurent that aparently is offering the same product and even a better one but who is in the " shadow " of dropbox..
I think that this kind of product is realy similar to social networks nowadays like facebook, the most important is not only the software, but more the community using it, Using a better social network than facebook have no sens if u have 10 followers and 2 interst pages..
DROPBOX succeed to take the control, what can she offer more now to stay at this place..
To follow...

I am not sure what kind of customers use Dropbox more, Personal or enterprise? For me, I use Dropbox only for sync up files between laptops at home and in office, if I have some project run with other, google doc is always the first choice for me to hold discussion.

For the cloud base system, there are many competitor: Google Doc, Office 365, Skydrive, If Dropbox want to join the competition about providing cloud base service, it might be hard to get into the market. But if it just stays in the position where it is can keep up the service quality, I think Dropbox could survive well!

i think dropbox is in a great position. they have a great service that people love. form there, they can offer other related services that people would pay for. since they already have the infrastructure set up, they can offer things similar to google docs, or server capacity, etc. to corporate customers.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned SugarSync yet. It is a current competitor of Dropbox which is better in a lot of ways. Most notably, it provides more free space and can share and sync any folder on your computer so you do not have to change your folder structure on your computer just for Dropbox. Like Dropbox, there is software for Windows, OSX, iOS, android etc. and syncing works the same. SugarSync can do exactly the same as Dropbox, but more. SugarSync's website is more positioned towards paying, corporate costumers instead of people using the free service. If you go to the download page of SugarSync, the free account is hidden all the way at the bottom.
The reason Dropbox is so much more successful than SugarSync, which is approximately as old as Dropbox, is probably that Dropbox is much more well known because of its referral system. Now that more people use Dropbox, it is much easier to share your folders through Dropbox because people will probably not want to install two separate pieces of software for the same service.

Dropbox has already implemented a really innovative way of trying to improve through Votebox. This is a system where users can suggest new features to be added to Dropbox, after which people can vote for these suggestions. This, however, would work much better if Dropbox would actually listen better to what their users want. The top suggestion (almost 150.000 votes) is now over 2 years old, the same age as the Votebox system itself.

Cloud chatting can be a real good idea, if you can chat with your " followers " about files you are sharing that can give a more pleasant file sharing his files especialy with smartphones and tablets.
I think the best way to make money from that is not only to add some payant applications but to improve dropbox options and utility so does paying the entire membership can realy be a good investment...

I'm sorry reacting even if the question was for Muric...
Muric ...

I think the real advantage of dropbox nowadays is that it is deeply rooted in people's habits as it is easy to use and largely adopted thanks to the free GB service it offers. As a consequence, even the cloud technology is easily imitable and already has strong competitors (iCloud, google docs), dropbox is very likely to remain a strong actor thanks to its reknowned and user-friendly image. So I'd say that if no issues happens, dropbox has no worry to have.
Of course, it has to remain competitive, but that goes without saying for any high tech businesses!

Then, I'd like to ask muric one question about his idea on mobile devices services: we already use dropbox on our iPhone, iPad, android phone etc. So what opportunities are we talking about: mobile cloud editing? Cloud chatting? Music cloud storage? And how do you think we could make money from that? Thanks!

According to the changing user behavior recent years, i guess dropbox should try to aim to mobile device services.

Basically, the "PERSONNEL" idea for computer is getting out of time. We might have personnel laptop, and just some have their own desktops.
People would have needs to modify, edit, and arrange their documents on mobile device in coming days.

Gdocs only provides functions to read & edit compatible docs, especially for office software.
There might be some new niches for dropbox to work on powerful functions for mobile device.

Now, the main competition of Dropbox are google doc and iCould, they also provide cloud services but in different way!
I think Dropbox now is a good file sharing and collaborative tool. Users satisfy because of its ease of use and very simple user interface.
Dropbox can extend its services in order to gain more customers but the original concept of dropbox should be preserved.

Any company need to adapt to changes in technology, customers needs etc. However, I think that Dropbox is in a good position to stay competitive for the years to come. While other competitors exist Dropbox has been able to establish itself as the dominant cross-platform file sharing and syncing service and I believe they will be able to hold this position for a foreseeable future. Indeed other services such a Googledocs, Microsoft 365 exists but they are more specialized and Dropbox offer cross-platform sharing.

Which was recently added as an update are the applications for smartphone and tablet giving a better portability dropbox. We can find the application on the Apple Store and the Android Market, in the future wish updates tcould still make a difference and highlight dropbox from his competitors ? adress the proffessionel world maybe..

I think the main advantage of dropbox currently is that it is indeed considered to be a free service by most users and at the same time easy to use. As such I do not see that there is much competition in the near future other than current services offered such as googledocs. However I think improvement and change are crucial in an highly innovytive and quickly changing environment in order to sustain. As such lack of development should be avoided at all times in my opinion.

What do you think about the future competition of dropbox, does it held on the future or should it improve the services provided to survive ?