Company / division: Dropbox
Dropbox finally brings its Google Docs competitor out of beta – The Verge (Jan 30, 2017)
Dropbox is one of those companies I’m constantly surprised (and yet delighted as a power user) has managed to stick around. By focusing on document storage and syncing, it’s arguably at the feature level – something other ecosystems do in the course of offering a much more complete feature set – and yet it’s managed to find a niche for itself, generating an annual run-rate of $1 billion in revenues in the process. It’s survived in recent years largely by moving in the direction of its major rival Box, which has always been enterprise focused, while Dropbox has straddled the consumer-enterprise divide in the past. Though it seems pushing into adjacent areas would be critical for the company’s longer term survival, I’m not at all convinced that it can be competitive against Google Docs or Office, and therefore also not convinced this is where it should be focusing its diversification efforts. I’m still somewhat skeptical that the company can survive in the long run, and it feels like the exception rather than the rule among one-trick pony companies, most of which continue to either die off or be absorbed by one of the big players.
via The Verge